Tom Mackie

A Gift for the Walls: Re-presenting

A framed photograph of a statue of Venus- cleaved in two- sits nestled in the corner; its fragmented form so perfectly fitting within the architecture that it sits, it is almost as if it emerged organically: growing out from the walls of the alcove. A digital print of a waterfall - the image itself being perhaps more at home in a travel catalogue than gallery- slides downwards in a queer geometric cascade, mirroring the ledge of a fire place. A series of painterly dove grey abstract works hold a secret. Their understated elegance bely their original state. What we look at are actually the undersides of found paintings: a naive painted landscape, a decoratively patterned painting of hearts- the art equivalent of Muzak. The canvases have been re-stretched, assembled to create new parallel works. Within these inverted paintings, layers of a history of mark making build up into a visible crust.

Read the catalogue for Mackie's exhibition at The Young, Wellington here