Sanderson presents Fugitives by Brenda Nightingale.
Nightingale is a contemporary abstract painter based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. She studied painting at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1998 and a Masters of Fine Arts in 2008. She has taught at several art schools in Aotearoa, most recently as Head of Department at the art department at Hagley College, Ōtautahi Christchurch.
This exhibition features large-scale abstract works informed by the conceptions of New Zealand poet Ursula Bethell. Bethell explored the complicated relationship between time and presence, shaped by her intimate experiences working in her garden on the Cashmere Hills in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
Over 70 years later, in the same region of Aotearoa, Nightingale’s work similarly explores “the burden of time’s omnipresence,” articulated through gestures of immediacy and an energetic layering of paint.
Throughout Fugitives, a dog haunts Nightingale’s canvases — are they a memory or a projection of the future? Through Nightingale’s push and pull of figurative abstraction, the paintings trace the movements of the dog. The animal’s fugitive nature captures the feeling of the inescapable transient nature of time, as well as the beauty in presence.
Nightingale’s work is represented in the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū collection and The Fletcher Trust Collection. She has produced several artist’s books including Christchurch Hills 2010 – 2012 as part of the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū’s Outer Spaces Projects after the city’s earthquakes in 2012. She lives, paints and gardens in Diamond Harbour.
