Hirschfeld Gallery

Further Convictions Pending
Andrew Beck, Sarah Maxey, Douglas Stichbury and Tim Thatcher
20 March – 2 May 2010

This exhibition brings together work by four Wellington-based artists, work which is forward looking, part of a larger body that is still developing. These are all new works; predominantly unexhibited, they have been created for this exhibition or within the last year. Representing a specific moment for each artist — a moment of conviction, fulfilment or pause — these works assume an optimistic outlook for the future. Within art making, the next certainty is always on the horizon. Yet alongside this interpretation lies a more pessimistic one. Used in a legal context, the phrase ‘further convictions pending’ presents a more foreboding prospect: the future is not necessarily a bright place.

Further Convictions Pending includes a typographic wall work, hand-processed black and white architectural photography, and oil painting. Each of the artists is at a different stage in their practice, from Sarah Maxey, a professionally established designer with her own imprint, to recent art school graduates Tim Thatcher and Douglas Stichbury, to current Master’s student Andrew Beck. The combination of artists is central to the exhibition; bringing together four individual responses to the place which is now, it offers a cross-section of practices that intersect at a moment of certainty.

The title of the exhibition draws on a book of the same name by Wellington poet Vincent O’Sullivan, a collection of his works from the last decade. Sarah Maxey designed the cover for this book, and it is one her discarded drafts from that time which served as the impetus for the type she revisits here as a vinyl wall work. Maxey’s hand-lettered design is a graphic banner in the space for the other works to play off, while for her it expands the restrictive page format she usually works with as a book designer. Drafts, cast-offs, the process as opposed to the product are all points of orientation for Further Convictions Pending.

Douglas Stichbury’s Enormous Emerald sits overlooked in the corner of a room, yet it also dominates the picture space, and commands our imaginations: its insignificance becomes compelling. Rather than making big statements about the way things should look, or should be read, these are all pictures of possibilities. In different ways each work claims a moment of our time to suggest ‘consider this’. Each offers its own statement about the everyday and what it is to be convinced, assured, or audacious, at least until further notice.

Abby Cunnane
Hirschfeld Gallery Curator

FURTHER READING ON THIS EXHIBITION

	Further Convictions Pending: Essay
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	An Essay by Chloe Lane: 'Gravity Dependent'
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	Further reading
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