Altered Perspectives by Linda Gair

Art has the powerful ability to alter perspective and convey messages that reconnect the viewer to their own experience through the work on offer. And in this exhibition titled ‘Altered Perspectives’ Gair’s paintings do just that.

The paintings offer us a likeness of the New Zealand landscape and coastline, but by employing changed and challenging perspectives Gair has altered how we perceive their space and form, shifting our visual perception of the familiar. By doing this, Gair encourages a deeper appreciation of these so-called recognisable landscapes and their visual dynamics, prompting introspection and self-reflecting reconnection.

Gair has endeavoured to present the familiar in a ‘new light,’ therefore providing the possibility of a new and personal story-telling in each work. On first approach one might have a feeling of unease from the altered perspective. Gair mines her own memory of places visited and moments of awe where the landscape has enveloped her. ‘T’ and ‘cross’ shapes often hold religious significance, yet here they are used as a device to divide the vista. Presenting paintings within paintings, capturing skies, sea and landforms changing as morning and evening light enhances a single majestic landscape. This is part of the idea behind naming each work, ‘Variation.’

She acknowledges there is a possibility that our sense of identity and belonging to particular familiar landscapes may be vague for the viewer, but never-the-less awakening memories of one’s own sense of place. Art historian Libby Lumpkin says, “the authority of a work of art resides in the richness and complexity of our responses to it”[i]. Gair’s wish is for the viewer to return, time and again, to look more deeply into the images and find the ‘sliding door’ of personal interpretations. A ‘variation’, as suggested by the tiles.

Gair says, “it so happens that through similarity I was looking at difference, encouraging the viewer to engage with the content, with what is evident, what is implied and what is concealed. Allowing the ‘stories’ to rise from the surface of the paintings. I’m not seeking the picturesqueness of these landscapes, as I have in the past, but rather a more sculptural-like breakdown of these inherent iconic landforms…. a kind of metamorphic process.”

[i] Justin Paton, How to look at a painting. Awa Press, Wellington, 2012, p 44.
Exhibition Dates: Wednesday 7th August - Saturday 31st August
Opening Event: Saturday 10th August 3-5pm