Geoff Tune, 14Sep-9Oct, Kerikeri

Geoff Tune's exhibition Interior/Internal
is at Art at Wharepuke in Kerikeri now til 9 October.
 
"These images have their genesis in the typical Kiwi 'OE';
visiting Britain and or Europe in search of places and objects of cultural or family significance
and taking a photo.
For me this process has been part of a search for cultural and personal identity,
of seeking links between where I come from in genealogical terms with where I am now. 
My  painting over the 20 years or so has drawn on  ideas derived from the field of archaeology,
gleaning information and theories about the distant past, particularly cosmologies,
 and attempting to apply these ideas to my own situation today.
Since first visiting Europe in 1995 I have done several series of paintings and prints
that directly reference places visited,
that over time take on a degree of significance in relation to my interests.

Geoff Tune, Shelter - Port Vendres 3, 2012
Digital Print, 21x30cm, edition of 40

Geoff Tune, Shelter - Collioure 1, 2012
Digital Print, 21x30cm, edition of 40

The images in this show fall into two groups:
The Shelter works being images derived from photos
of the interiors of churches and cathedrals and a Neolithic passage tomb.
Without wanting to push the analogy there are many points of similarity.
When visiting a cathedral today one has to imagine it lit only with flickering torches and candles,
chanting in a language you don’t understand
 and surrounded by ancestral burials and disarticulated body parts [relics].
Not to different to probable rituals in Neolithic tombs and parts of Palaeolithic caves.
Geoff Tune, Window in Port Vendres I, 2011-12
Digital Print, 21x30cm, edition of 40

The second set of works refers to a holiday in 2011
at Port Vendres in the very south of Mediterranean France.
It was here that the Scottish designer Charles Rene MacIntosh reinvented himself as a painter
at the end of his life and where his ashes were cast.
He produced many strongly structured landscapes [reflecting his design sensibility]
with an emphasis on the clear blue and silvery grey light.
In the next [adjoining] village north, Collioure, Matisse invented Fauvism,
and notably painted the view from his window.
I have bought these two artists together in my own way as a form of homage.

I have called the show Interior/Internal as the images relate to being inside a 'shelter'
and looking either up or out and they are perhaps more subjective than objective."

If your not able to make it to Kerikeri to see the exhibition,
you can view the artworks here online at Art at Wharepuke's Flickr page.


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