Alan Ibell, The Mine, 2023. Acrylic on canvas with Rimu frame, 78 x 78cm. Courtesy: the artist and Jhana Millers Gallery, Wellington.

Jhana Millers presents their fourth solo exhibition with Alan Ibell, DWELLINGS. In this new exhibition, Ibell extends his longstanding interest in the correspondence and contrast between the internal and external facets of selfhood. Collectively, the works explore the gap between how one perceives oneself and how one is perceived by others.

The duality inherent in the works is signalled by the work titles as well as the familiar Ibellian figures — often painted as doubles. Domestic motifs of the house and the curtain also recur in the paintings, where their altered scale creates a sense of dislocation for the viewer — the foregrounded house is now a background; the curtain has been turned on its side to create the pitched roof of the house. Once again, we are forced to question what we see, and to impose our own narrative upon the paintings

The works in DWELLINGS advance Ibell’s ongoing project of formal reduction and his exploration of the performative nature of viewing art. On more intimately sized canvases than those seen in his 2022 exhibition, A New Mountain, he invites us to meditate on the roles we assume and the spaces we inhabit in both our conscious and unconscious lives.

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