FacingTime: Portraits Of Geoff By Euan Macleod Opens At New Zealand Portrait Gallery

An exhibition centred around isolation, loss, technology and most importantly friendship created during the Covid-19 lockdown, has opened at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata

Facing Time, Geoff, 2021, Digital Print

FacingTime: Portraits of Geoff by Euan Macleod, is series of 321 portraits depicting fellow artists Euan Macleod and Geoff Dixon’s daily communication on FaceTime, a godsend for so many isolated by the onset of the pandemic.

According to curator Helena Walker, the conversations started between both artists randomly, but were always photographed by Euan. In time the photos became paintings, a big portrait of Geoff, and a small one of the artist in the corner. Euan made a pledge with himself to paint one each day, as random snaps became planned seated poses while they discussed everything, including the death of Geoff’s partner. It became a distraction from a difficult world.

“Their connections and disconnections are now archived under a marriage of the historic ethic of painting and cell phone technology. The new way we talk,” said Walker.

Jaenine Parkinson, Director of the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata, says the exhibition will be relatable to many New Zealanders who have their own lockdown stories.

“When I first met Euan and he casually showed me these paintings, informing me that there were hundreds more. My initial reaction was that this was absolutely the best artistic response to the Covid-19 lockdowns I had seen.

It captured how video chat, facetime or zooming had become part of our everyday lexicon and conveyed those feelings of being both disconnected but connected through this technology. Seeing them now hung on mass in our gallery, I’m struck now by how the series conveys a sense of those days and weeks of lockdown monotonously stretching out and looping.”

Euan Macleod (born in Christchurch 1956) and Geoff Dixon (born in Bluff 1954) met while studying design at Christchurch Polytech in 1974. Macleod subsequently pursued a fine arts diploma at Ilam University and they both established careers in museum exhibition design/ display before they moved to Sydney separately in 1980/1981 to work at the Australian Museum. Euan swiftly forged what would become a long-term relationship with East Sydney’s Watters Gallery in 1982 and held his first solo exhibition there in the following year. When Watters Gallery closed its doors after five decades, he joined King Street Gallery on William where he still exhibits, along with Niagara Galleries in Melbourne, Bowen Galleries in Wellington, and PGgallery192 in Christchurch. He has since sustained an inspired and passionate four-decade commitment to the landscapes of both Australia and Aotearoa.

In 1999 Euan won Australia’s Archibald Prize for Portraiture with Selfportrait: head like a hole. He has received a number of other awards, as well as being represented in numerous public collections.

Dixon’s career path was itinerant and largely sustained by graphic design and inspired by travel until the late ’80s when he began concentrating on painting and assemblage, exhibiting with Bowen Galleries in Wellington. He has also formed an enduring connection to global environmental issues on both sides of the ditch. For Euan and Geoff our placement in the environment is a crucial signature element, and for both there is a fervent crossover between the physical and emotional realms.

FacingTime: Portraits of Geoff by Euan Macleod will run until Sunday, 10 September at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata, Shed 11, Wellington Waterfront.

More information about FacingTime: Portraits of Geoff by Euan Macleod can be found at https://www.nzportraitgallery.org.nz/.

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