Gallery Gander

I visited the art gallery yesterday and spent a few hours entranced with the works of Julia Morison. Spread over 7 compartments, there were three themes:

The first section I examined was the meandering concentricities of "A Loop Around A Loop" a 20 year retrospective including more recent work produced especially for the exhibition. According to www.christchurchartgallery.org "The exhibition defies the traditional concept of a survey, instead multi-part installations juxtaposed against each other spiral and wrap around the gallery spaces, inviting viewers to ponder the notion of beginnings and endings, and the constant circling of ideas within ideas."

The larger-than-life canvases of "Gargantua's Petticoat" dominated the cavernous interior space. Many, like a maze for the mind, are based on repetitious woven patterns of thread and fabric that don't quite match up and yet that seems to be the very thing that holds each piece together as a composition.

And finally, multiple installations containing the repeating symbols, texture and inherent inferences of: lead, blood, clay, excretement, ash, iridesence, silver, mercury/mercuric oxide, gold and transparency. Yes, it is "modern art" and if you don't undestand what I've written; go see it for yourself (it's there til 23 October 2006). There is much thought process gone into it, it is calculated, yet almost alive.