14 Oct 2011
The McCahon House Trust is pleased to announce three new artists for the sixth McCahon Artists' Residency programme at its French Bay residence and studio. Kathy Barry, Ruth Buchanan and Regan Gentry were selected from the forty four artists who applied for the three annual residencies.
Auckland based artist, Kathy Barry, will take up residence in April 2012. Kathy is currently a teaching fellow at Elam School of Fine Art where she completed her MFA. Over the last few years her work has evolved into geometric works on paper combining the disciplines of painting and drawing. She intends to produce a significant body of works-on-paper inspired and informed by the residency context and developing fresh new directions as a result of having time for experimentation and research.
Penney Moir and Jenny Neligan, Bowen Galleries: We're delighted to be working with Kathy Barry. Her exhibiting projects, her academic achievement, and her teaching are a powerful combination belying the delicacy of her beautifully executed paintings and drawings. The deep emotional sensitivity in Kathy's works captures attention, as it did at the recent Auckland Art Fair, along with the detail and delicacy and the patience and time required to make them.
Recently returned from Rotterdam, artist Regan Gentry finished his BFA at Otago School of Art and has now made Auckland home and will move to French Bay in late June 2012. As a sculptor, Regan's practice typically depicts the relationship of people to their environment. The interplay of people and place, economy and ecology, local history, and situational relevance informs Reagan's work. Regan's project during the Residency will look at wetland and intertidal zones as a thematic metaphor to view his artistic practice.
Deborah White, Whitespace: Regan Gentry could be considered a genuine conglomeration of engineer and artist. Graduating from the Otago Polytechnic in 2000 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Regan has effectively bridged the gap between what it means to be an artist working in the public sector, and the public's acceptance of that work; Regan's work consists of a seamless integration of art and space.
Ruth Buchanan (Te Ati Awa/Taranaki), originally from New Plymouth, completed her BFA at Elam and gained her MFA in Rotterdam. She lives in Berlin and will return to take up her residency in November 2012. In recent work, Ruth has used sculpture, drawing, mixedmedia installation, photography and text to construct literary and built spaces. Her work explores issues of identity and the parameters of artistic action posing how cultural heritage shapes understanding art and art making today. She intends to take her work in a new direction investigating the interior as form and concept through detailed portrait-like drawings, watercolours and paintings in the vicinity of the McCahon House and local environs.
Tina Barton, Director Adam Art Gallery: [Ruth] has developed a practice that is gaining critical attention in Europe and New Zealand .Her practice is very light on its feet, mixing words, objects and images in ways that activate spaces to create charged situations in which viewers/readers can engage both with the source material she draws upon and on Buchanan's own 'voice' as it interacts with its subject.
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