Hendris Lot

The Poetic Condition
De Dichterlijke Aard

28 Oct – 10 Dec 2017
13 artists from
The Hague and
Aotearoa | New Zealand

Thom Vink
Sanne Maes
Channa Boon
Anne Wellmer
Martje Zandboer
Sonja van Kerkhoff
Pietertje van Splunter
Michelle Backhouse
Adrienne Spratt
Edward Walton
Brenda Tuuta
Brit Bunkley
Hopeha

99 Atkinson Ave, Otaki

Open
Saturdays + Sundays
10-4 p.m.
or by appointment.
021 260 5723

Exhibition events
28 Oct: 11 a.m. – 12 noon “Impressions of the Venice Biennale, Documenta + Munster Skulptuur” by Sonja van Kerkhoff

Meet the artists
in the gallery
28 Oct: 10-3 pm Michelle Backhouse, Edward Walton, Sonja van Kerkhoff

These artists explore, respond or extend the theme of our human nature and the relevance of the aesthetic of poetic intervention to the self, socio-political or society with a wide range of media and approaches to ‘big questions’ (who are we, how do we live, how do we think/feel), so that the exhibition as a whole is like an installation encompassing diversities of vision.

Some artworks are poetic selections with direct reference to contemporary political worlds, such as Channa Boon’s video, Brit Bunkley’s objects referencing abject histories of place or Sonja van Kerkhoff’s nature vs nurture flower transparencies. Others use materials or metaphors associated with cultural expression and relate them to the personal, such as Brenda Tuuta’s woven ‘speaking’ pieces, Adrienne Spratt’s giant sized basket and Anne Wellmer’s videos. Martje Zandboer’s suspended miniatures, which contain family photographs from the Dutch East Indies, mix Dutch colonial history with the theme of the personal and intergenerational. Thom Vink’s works take a more material versus human spirit perspective, where architectural models and photographs create a composite humane aesthetic, while Sanne Maes’ self-portrait video/drawing connects the self with the natural world. Pietertje van Splunter’s videos are like a poetics on the mundane: housework. Her brooms seem animated by an unearthly force and the constant stacking of the differing tribes of kitchen utensils suggests a game with secret rules. In using humour with the overkill her videos are reminders that the everyday domestic, is also a microcosm of the amusing, perhaps necessary banality of habit while Michelle Backhouse’s sculptures use seemingly banal materials, building paper, netting or house paint to create ethereal protusions.

Tags: Otaki