Ruth Thomas-Edmond: Heap Series
24 April 2010 - 20 June 2010
Auckland artist Ruth Thomas-Edmond creates mesmerising work that subtly entices and deceives the eye. Key to her practice is a questioning of perceived reality through abstraction, in the form of cumulous colour field paintings or the mapping of intricate linear structures that appear to contort the picture plane. A variation of this reality-bending abstraction is also apparent in her Heap Series. Constructed of numerous recycled cardboard facets and painted in various soft hues, the heaps - despite being three dimensional objects - function in a strangely similar way to her drawing and painting. However, being objects that occupy lived space, the heaps are both indicators of the physical environment and the imaginary. The contoured surface draws attention to the variation of light and architectural form in a given space, while at the same time resemble models for alien landscapes, cities or crystalline growths.
In a significant new development of her Heap Series Thomas-Edmond launches out from the Te Tuhi Drawing Wall surface to engage the busy social space that surrounds it. In doing so, the cardboard heap intervenes with the transitory nature of the site as well as its imagined realities.