Anya Sinclair
Everything Must Go
Opening
Friday
September 11
12-7PM
Please join Anya for the opening of
Everything Must Go
A Spring Celebration at OLGA
Note, due to Covid 19 Level 2 restrictions the exhibition opening will be held over an extended period.
Visit anytime between 12 and 7PM on Friday
Drinks and nibbles with Anya between 4 and 7.
A maximum of 10 people in the gallery at any time.
Exhibition runs to October 1
"Everything Must Go", Anya Sinclair
Eighty-one canvases — piled on top of one another on a table in the centre of the gallery, and hung either framed or unframed on the gallery walls — are the fruit of Anya Sinclair’s lockdown. While the exhibition title "Everything Must Go" echoes the frenzy of grabbing bargains off a sale table, the context of lockdown in which the paintings were made suggests other potential interpretations, such as vulnerability and precarity. But there is nevertheless a sense of optimism in this body of work, as the subjects are whorls of flowers, which point towards the then distant season of spring. There is an urgency and frenzy to the rush of spring growth, which Sinclair acknowledges in the gallery with the inclusion of a poem by Joan Fleming titled Fast Flowers.
While lockdown itself may not have been fast-paced for all, there was undoubtedly a strong presence of urgency. These multiple sources of and contexts for heightened emotion, even bordering on "feverish", are apparent in this exhibition — to the extent that Sinclair’s floral subjects begin to approach abstraction in some instances. The canvases of "fast flowers" are almost alive with the energy coursing through them, and by apparent rapid execution become almost schematic with wide outlines in bright colours, streamlined shapes, and an all-over style of composition. These formal decisions, combined with an intentional absence of perspective, push the paintings towards abstraction. Amongst the fever there is calm.
Robyn Maree Pickens
Otago Daily Times September 17 2020
Eighty-one canvases — piled on top of one another on a table in the centre of the gallery, and hung either framed or unframed on the gallery walls — are the fruit of Anya Sinclair’s lockdown. While the exhibition title "Everything Must Go" echoes the frenzy of grabbing bargains off a sale table, the context of lockdown in which the paintings were made suggests other potential interpretations, such as vulnerability and precarity. But there is nevertheless a sense of optimism in this body of work, as the subjects are whorls of flowers, which point towards the then distant season of spring. There is an urgency and frenzy to the rush of spring growth, which Sinclair acknowledges in the gallery with the inclusion of a poem by Joan Fleming titled Fast Flowers.
While lockdown itself may not have been fast-paced for all, there was undoubtedly a strong presence of urgency. These multiple sources of and contexts for heightened emotion, even bordering on "feverish", are apparent in this exhibition — to the extent that Sinclair’s floral subjects begin to approach abstraction in some instances. The canvases of "fast flowers" are almost alive with the energy coursing through them, and by apparent rapid execution become almost schematic with wide outlines in bright colours, streamlined shapes, and an all-over style of composition. These formal decisions, combined with an intentional absence of perspective, push the paintings towards abstraction. Amongst the fever there is calm.
Robyn Maree Pickens
Otago Daily Times September 17 2020