Two new exhibitions are opening 28 July 2017 at Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi — the Whakatāne Library and Exhibition Centre.
Visual Expressions
Art lovers are encouraged to visit Visual Expressions – the annual exhibition of the Whakatāne Society of Arts and Crafts, which opens this Friday in the Sheaff Family Gallery at Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi – Whakatāne Library and Exhibition Centre.
Visitors will discover a wide range of locally-made arts on show, including painting, woodturning, sculpture, pottery and fibre craft.
The Society was formed in 1961 as the Form & Colour Group, by a group of painters and potters who were interested in promoting arts and crafts in the community. They became the Whakatāne Society Arts Society in 1964. In the early 1980s, the Society combined with the Spinners and Weavers, Wood Turners and Lacemakers to form the current Whakatāne Society of Arts and Crafts.
The Society is thriving, with 150 current members, and offers a range of groups, classes and workshops for people to develop new artistic and technical skills.
New members are welcome and contact people for the various groups represented are always happy to provide more information about the activities available.
Visual Expressions runs until 15 October, alongside Jordan Davey-Emms’ solo exhibition, Ground Hum, in the Whakatāne Community Board Gallery.
Ground Hum
Emerging local artist Jordan Davey-Emms will launch her first solo show at Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi – the Whakatāne Library and Exhibition Centre – on Friday, 28 July from 5:30 pm.
Jordan was recently selected as the overall winner among the top Masters and Honours students from all four art schools in Auckland, receiving the prestigious 2017 Glaister Ennor Graduate Art Award at Auckland’s Sanderson Gallery.
For her upcoming exhibition Ground Hum, she explores place, connection and the linkages between them in an installation that approaches “place-making as a sticky, dimensional collage process, where fragmentary experiences, materials, visuals, and sound collapse into one another.”
Visitors will find a kind of trial-space, built of gestures and material action, which is an attempt to engage with the present-place — a “messy, slippery mash of parts, both physical and digital, human and not.”
Jordan will also be holding an informal artist’s talk on Saturday, 29 July from 10:30 am, when she will discuss her current art practice through conversation and material play.
Located in the Whakatāne Community Board Gallery, Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi, Ground Hum will run until 10 September.