Elliot Collins - We May Never Meet Again

We are delighted to start the 2019 exhibition programme with new work by Elliot Collins. Please join us Wednesday evening January 30 from 5.30 pm to celebrate with Elliot at the opening of his first solo exhibition in Wellington in three years.

Over that period, he has been busy with a now completed PhD exploring historical monuments and memorials in the New Zealand landscape and their relationship to memory and identity. His new multi-media exhibition extends his notion of "memory markers" from a primary association with death into a celebration of life.

We may never meet again draws on notions of memory and momentary observations. It memorialises the small, often fleeting experiences or feelings, and exhorts us savour the moment.

"I feel that these paintings can act as a salve for contemporary life, slowing and soothing," Dr Collins says.

The exhibition comprises oil paintings on board, unique photographs and copper discs that all operate in different ways to create memorials that elevate the everyday.

Ann Paulsen in an article in Art New Zealand Winter 2018 describes his artworks as “collections of sensory perceptions and knowledge, waiting to be activated by the viewer. These markers operate as ‘open’ texts, with the possibility of, the provocation to discover, multiple meanings.”

We are delighted also to launch a new billboard by Collins which reinforces the exhibition and plays with the multiple connotation of 'still' and the idea of bearing witness.

Collins has exhibited nationally and internationally and has been the recipient of international artist residencies in France, The Netherlands and most recently India.

The exhibition will continue until 23 February.