Opens June 24th at Sanderson Contemporary Art, Auckland. Browse the exhibition catalogue.
The suite of nine canvases making up Labour of Love burst with botanical energy. Based on the garden that wraps around her studio, the paintings are a celebration of the garden that Wanaka-based Katherine Throne has nurtured from thin Otago soil.
Despite their joyous optimism, these paintings have a definitive physicality. Like the plants she has lovingly coaxed outside, the work on display is the result of hard-won labour. The act of creating is filled with trail, error, success and failure, and yet for Throne, the urge to create is constant. The intertwining of her labour both outside and in the studio are the subject of this exhibition.
Effort in the garden spills into the paintings themselves, and Throne’s compulsion to push the possibilities of her medium are obvious. There’s a fullness about the artworks, achieved with gestural marks and lustrous paint quality. When studying the texture alone on one of Throne’s canvases, the variety is vast, with flat areas contrasting with thick impasto. The surface texture and tension of the painting is an extension of the canvas, entering the viewer’s space in high relief.
What’s also evident is the journey Throne’s brushes have taken. You can track them across the canvas, the artist never covering up brush marks, perhaps just like freshly tilled earth. Plants and paints mimic each other in their journey of growth – one tossed by wind and sun, the other by palette knife and brush.
— Dr Penelope Jackson