RUTH THOMAS-EDMOND SMELLS LIKE PINK, 12 SEPTEMBER - 6 OCTOBER, 2018
Joyous contradictions lie at the heart of Ruth Thomas-Edmond's new exhibition, Smells like pink. Here we have art wanting to take us for a walk in some imaginary urban park where brutalist architecture meets unrestrainedly fecund nature. This is not the purity of mid-20th century high art abstraction but the creation of form as a way of being in the world which encompasses all the sensory contradictoriness of that experience.
Solid forms in two and three-dimensions are layered and carefully built up brush stoke by brushstroke and cardboard square upon square. Paint in the sculptures gluing the pieces, oozing, glooping, dripping, wanting to be licked, and the structures themselves spawning abundant new growth, multifarious offspring. Paint on the paper (Thomas-Edmond's preferred smooth ground for paint) applied with her signature dabbing brushstrokes, carefully contained and built up in layers that conceal and reveal. But, like the three-dimensional forms, these forms also wander - here free-form across the roll of paper that the artist has hung uncut - in a gesture that invites the viewer to linger and select the fruit that must be cut.
Careful and casual, sensory and dry, everyday and ethereal, olfactory colour, Thomas-Edmond's third solo exhibition in the gallery offers rich and lingering contradictions.
Wellington based, Thomas-Edmond has a Master of Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts. Recent public exhibitions include Solo 2014 at the Dowse Art and How to Fall in 2013 and The Obstinate Object in 2012 at City Gallery Wellington.
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Luminous moves, 2018 acrylic on paper, 1000 x 1000 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Forget a terrible year, 2018 acrylic on paper, 1000 x 1000 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Shaded room, 2018 acrylic on paper, 1100 x 800 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Listen, float, hold hands, 2018 acrylic on paper, 1100 x 800 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Of pain and doubts - kindness will follow, 2018 acrylic on paper, 1200 x 1200 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Blowing out of my arms, 2018 acrylic on paper, 700 x 650 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Drift away instead, 2018 acrylic on paper, 1000 x 900 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Something to see, 2018 acrylic on paper, 1400 x 1300 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Detours in your mind, 2018 acrylic on paper, 1400 x 1400 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Something's coming, 2018 Recycled cardboard and plastic, 680 x 360 x 450 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Laugh at the moon, 2018 Recycled cardboard and plastic, 800 x 670 x 480 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Sky is purple, 2018 Recycled cardboard and plastic, 830 x 380 x 480 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Bloom 1, 2018 Recycled cardboard and plastic, 240 x 160 x 110 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Bloom 2, 2018 Recycled cardboard and plastic, 240 x 230 x 210 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Anomaly 1, 2018 Recycled cardboard and plastic, 110 x 160 x 90 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Anomaly 2, 2018 Recycled cardboard and plastic, 180 x 150 x 180 mm |
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 | Ruth Thomas-Edmond Anomaly 3, 2018 Recycled cardboard and plastic, 200 x 140 x 170 mm |
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