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Cultural Diplomacy
15/09/10 - 10/10/10

Don't worry, be happy
18/08/10 - 12/09/10

Anarchy in Avondale
21/07/10 - 14/08/10

Beneath the Blue
23/06/10 - 18/07/10

Duck!
25/05/10 - 19/06/10

The House of Lentigo
28/04/10 - 22/05/10

Stupid Studid Stupid Stupid Stupid Daddy
31/03/10 - 24/04/10

Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious
03/03/10 - 27/03/10

Dark Matter Blue Noise
03/02/10 - 27/02/10

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Signs of Texas & The Western Way

Mary Macpherson
Martin Basher

Tuesday 14 March - 01 April

Driving through Texas after the South by Southwest Music festival, Macpherson photographed the highway signs, stores, motel lots and churches using a small snapshot camera. The resulting vignettes of Texas continue her interest in the relationship between the land and the signs and buildings that inhabit it.
“Some signs and buildings I saw like coke signs and little churches are also part of significant imagery by historic American photographers. I had to find a way into that history from the viewpoint of an artist from New Zealand” she said. “The subjects I photograph in NZ are of course present elsewhere. Human lives everywhere can somehow be reflected in rooms, buildings, streets and signs.”

Alongside these works Basher’s cartoonesque paintings present a world under threat. In some works square brown buildings pour smoke into discoloured skies but in others coloured lights and wooden balconies colonise gorgeous wooded areas and the only significant inhabitants are brightly coloured butterflies and a fast-driven orange Holden.
“Drawing on the visual languages of the natural history diorama, the triumphalist American landscape and the cartoon, the work makes allusive comment about the consumptive way we currently live. It is a vision of our environmental short-sightedness” Basher said.


Ice 2005 by Mary Macpherson

Arrow 2005 by Mary Macpherson

Bugs on the windshield 2005 by Martin Basher

Upskilling / Developing / Achieving 2006 by Martin Basher