New Exhibitions: Sarah Jane Parton, Zina Swanson

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TWO NEW EXHIBITIONS AT THE PHYSICS ROOM

Guidance
Sarah Jane Parton
18 April – 12 May 2007

Opening preview: Tuesday 17 April 2007, 5.30pm

Sarah Jane Parton’s new installation Guidance is a critique of the future as it has been imagined in the past.

Through an exhaustive investigation of all attempts at social engineering ever, the artist has conceived the ultimate hybridised ideology for how people should be. Ultimately flawed, yet ultimately perfect, the true way of the future is offered as Guidance and is presented in a video work that is accompanied by a series of impermanent drawings and changing photographic images.

Wellington-based artist Parton often appears in her work in various guises, performing to appropriated remixed pop tunes. In the video work that appears in Guidance the artist performs a choreographed gymnastics-type routine to a reworked Guns ‘n’ Roses track. Photographs of non-descript interiors and family portraits are displayed alongside diagrammatic drawings that attempt to expose and thus explain the inner workings of humankind.

Sarah Jane Parton has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (with Honours), majoring in Time Based Art from the School of Fine Arts, Massey University, Wellington.

Recent exhibitions include Painted Faces (curated by Sarah Farrar), Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, Wellington; Macrofun, with Eugene Hansen, Jenny Gillam and Paul Faris, Show Gallery, Wellington; Canned Heat (curated by Bekah Carran), Blue Oyster Galley, Dunedin; Frugal Pleasures - a Survey of New Zealand Video Art (curated by Emma Bugden), City Gallery, Wellington and The Film Archive, Wellington; Prospect 2004: New Art, New Zealand (curated by Emma Bugden), City Gallery, Wellington.

The Physics Room receives major funding from Creative New Zealand/Toi Aotearoa.

Zina Swanson
18 April – 12 May 2007

Opening preview: Tuesday 17 April 2007, 5.30pm

Toiling the organic world with an alchemical curiosity, Zina Swanson’s drawing and sculptural practice hints at memento-mori where cycles of birth and death serve as a reminder of the beauty and fragility of our own mortality. Her recent practice has explored the benign beauty of lily stamens sealed delicately inside hand blown test tubes submerged in water; embryonic drawings carefully crafted with tea stains and ink; a lifeless tree laid inside of a gallery linked with a rhizome of glass tubes to the world outside where raindrops fruitlessly attempt to nourish. In her exhibition at The Physics Room Swanson takes a different tact, instead of drawing on a world of lifeless objects in an attempt to reinvigorate them, she breeds life, unfurling a meticulously crafted new work that still resonates with a mystery and intrigue into the beauty and fragility of life cycles.

Zina Swanson is a Christchurch-based artist who graduated from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts with a BFA (Sculpture) in 2003. Since completing her degree she has exhibited a number of large scale sculptural works, as well as several solo exhibitions of drawings nationally at Artspace (AKL), Enjoy Public Art Gallery (WEL), HSP (CHCH) and City Art (CHCH). In 2004 she was the winner of the CoCA/Anthony Harper Award for Contemporary Art.

ENDS

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