Mesmerising, original works by two emerging artists
Josh Bashford, Sophie Scott
11 December 2014 to 24 January 2015
Josh Bashford returns to The Diversion Gallery with a new series of his signature, intricate, one-off woodcuts, swirling with finely carved images derived from the birds, fish, landscape and waters of Canterbury, underscored by his allusion to spirituality and his NZ-Pacific heritage. The enthusiastic support of collectors at his last (near-sellout) show here helped Josh acquire his own press to handle his large scale woodcuts as well as smaller works on paper, and that’s allowed a ‘more considered’ approach. The natural world is even more evident, especially the elephant fish or reperepe which emerges glowing and otherworldly from the water. ‘There are often whirlpools, and where there is churning there is life breeding, ready to come out, what is suppressed…’
New to The Diversion is the very talented Sophie Scott, whose work hovers at the point where an image forms and dissolves, through a stencil process. However, these are paintings, not monoprints, presented under Perspex. Her images, often of New Zealand cities like Wellington (left), are stripped back until the place is recognisable only through its landmarks, suggestions of shape.
‘The stencils are remnants of the painting process revealing the editing system of reduction and erasure,’ she says, reducing the image down to what is essential, leaving a confetti of geometrics. She’s twice been a finalist in the Parkin Drawing Prize, and is certainly one to watch.