Bartley and Company Art

Bartley Company Art is pleased to present a new exhibition by Auckland artist Sam Mitchell - her first in our gallery and her first in Wellington for a few years. The show comprises her signature paintings on perspex -- her "portraits from the inside out" - and a series of watercolours on found book paper.

In 2010 Sam was the Paramount winner of the Wallace Trust Art Award which led to her spending six months in New York in 2011 on a residency at New York's ISCP (International Studio & Curatorial Program). This experience continues to play out in her work with the new 'portraits' in this exhibition exploring the hipster culture that was so prevalent in Williamsburg where she was based during her residency. 'Hips' takes a light hearted and subversive look at style, at markers of identity and how popular culture internalises and surfaces in the individual psyche. Her medium, with its characteristic flat surface interacts with the ideas at play in her work reinforcing the tension between the veneer of the outer character and his or her suggested inner life.

As TJ McNamara has written: Sam Mitchell's work is sensational but never comfortable.

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