Between Then and Here: Selected Works by DSA 2020 Graduates

RDS Gallery begins its 2021 schedule with an exhibition featuring works by 2020 graduates of the Dunedin School of Art, an institution, which, established in 1870, has enriched the city’s cultural life for just over 150 years. The art on display was selected by a panel of three anonymous referees, all established experts in contemporary art from the Dunedin community, with a view to highlighting both the School of Art and its talented students.

In a year afflicted by a 100-year catastrophe – the Covid-19 pandemic – it might have been anticipated that artistic creativity would take a dive. To the contrary, the opposite is true, as proven by this current exhibition, which represent some of the outstanding achievements of students graduating from the class of 2020 at the Dunedin School of Art. These works speak both to the necessity of artistic creation as a sociological and psychological imperative, and to the undiminished inventiveness of the next generation of this country’s artists.

The range of media represented in this exhibition attests to the vitality of New Zealand art: screen prints, wood and plaster sculptures, pen and ink drawings, multimedia works, and digital prints, as well as paintings. More importantly, in terms of their thematic content, the art on display manifests an engagement by young New Zealanders with some of the most pressing concerns faced by this society. Chief among them are cultural issues, such as the need to come to terms with the unconscious bias implicit in the application of certain labels that have a racial implication (Hemi Hosking).

Accompanying these concerns are others: nostalgia for a world that is changing (Dillon Waddell); concern for what is occurring in the borderlands between urban and rural (Lucian Howard); and awareness of the dysfunctionality of domestic life (Maisie Robinson). As far as the psychological dimensions of New Zealand life are concerned, these creations reveal a preoccupation with the transition into adulthood (Tess Wing), including the experience of loneliness, dislocation, and depression (Pippi Miller). As such, these emerging artists hold up a mirror to this society in which it can contemplate the relation between what it has been and what it might be becoming, or wish to become.

A number of the artists extend twentieth century aesthetic concerns into the twenty-first century, underlining the importance of art history to contemporary art. Koren Allpress interrogates colour theory, while Brittany Sleight reinvents Surrealist practices for the computer age. Again harking back to the Surrealists, Antonia Craig conceives of painting as a means of engaging with the unconscious, while Harrison Freeth is preoccupied with the concept of play as a political act, echoing the historical avant-garde, in particular Dadaism.

Altogether, the works in this show suggest that the prospects for the future of art in this country are undiminished.

Between Then and Here: Selected Works by the DSA 2020 Graduates
15 January - 6 February
RDS Gallery, 6 Castle Street
Opening Reception Friday 15 January, 5:30-7