The Earl Street Journal (2021)

The language of pattern and the rhythm of spaces commence the dialogues of the Earl Street Journal: there are the abstracted cultural narratives of Peata Larkin, the exhilarating iridescence of Neil Dawson’s wall-mounted feathers, the ever-altering light-infused tablets of Russell Moses, the relief carvings and colour repetitions of Zena Elliott.

Peter James Smith fuses the passage of time and scientific endeavor with the majesty and menace of the Fiordland landscape. Bruce Hunt takes us into the immensity of the Central Otago alpine landscape, whereas Natchez Hudson questions how we read the environment and what we are doing to it today.

Damien Kurth’s still life works contrast the apparently mundane, revealing them to be vectors of beauty. Darryn George presents the world as an organic stage set and a Christian parable. Yuki Kihara in her time-travelling Salome alter-ego explores the vestiges of memory in colonial Sāmoa and in the empty Whakatu Freezing Works site.

Leanne Morrison with rare dexterity and revealing optical effects explores the advancing and receding properties of colour. Graham Bennett’s distinctive sculpture – the subject of a major Ron Sang publication and a survey exhibition at Christchurch Art Gallery – establishes multiple sight lines. Combining a narrative of measuring devices, traditional Polynesian patterns and rotating, allusive, pod forms (recalling seeds as well as sections of the globe) Bennett develops important narratives about our environment and behaviour.