Newtown Nuances

We managed to bring a piece of art home with us from our honeymoon. It was an abstract acrylic painting of Portofino in Italy. We bought it in one of the small towns along the Cinque Terre. Ironically enough the painter was Welsh!

We were on holidays last year at my sister's house in Perpignan in France and happened to pick up a contemporary piece of modern art in the form of an oil painting. Painted, again ironically, by an artist better known for his sculptures. We picked the painting up in a gallery in the lovely town of Collioure.

Quite by accident the idea of having a piece of art, to remind us of somewhere we have been, has become something we aspire too. We didn't find anything that appealed to us in Australia and were determined not to let the same thing happen here in New Zealand.

We have been popping in and out of galleries where ever we travel and apart from one painting that I liked, but Sharon didn't, we haven't seen anything that appealed to us, until last Sunday that is.

We go into the New Zealand Academy of Fine Art every time we pass by and happened to come across a photographic exhibition called Newtown Nuances. The exhibition was by 18 second year students from the local Massey University and it was fabulous! The next two pics are by a photographer called Elizabeth Cohen who kindly gave me permission to show them on the blog.






The exhibition was about trying to capture the character of Newtown, a suburb of Wellington known for it's cultural diversity. Elizabeth wrote the following description of the above pieces:

"In this project I have created a montage of images which illustrates the interaction between various cultures in the Newtown community. The diversity of Newtown is represented in its wide variety of ethnic restaurants.....I have explored this through the overlaying and blending of images, accentuating the busy Newtown environment"

As you have probably guessed by now, her work really appealed to us and we bought the photograph, or piece of art as I like to refer to it, directly above. Elizabeth only displayed the two pieces above and was the only student to represent Newtown in a very abstract way, a very brave move that for us made her work stand out. (To be fair there were some other abstract pieces, but they were more conventional.)

As the scans above are very small I have enlarged sections of the piece we bought so you can appreciate the detail better.

Unfortunately the show is now over and the collection of photographs will probably never be displayed as part of an exhibition again.

We think we are very lucky to have a memento of it and by default Wellington.

Cathal