Geoff Thornley, History #6, 2017. Oil on linen on board, 122 x 122 cm. Courtesy: the artist, and Fox Jensen McCrory, Auckland.

Geoff Thornley’s almost 50-year painting practice is unquestionably one of the most considered and refined in New Zealand. In this new exhibition of anterior and history paintings, there is a softer organicism to the colour that opens the face of the work, allowing us to see into and through the structure he has built. Shifts in light invite the anatomy of the painting to be partially exposed in a slow, demure dance that both reveals and obscures simultaneously.

Thornley reminds us that making a painting is about incrementally building form and presence – about giving body to colour and light, as only painting can do, but that this reciprocation takes time and commitment in viewing as it does in making.

Exhibition opens 5:30–8pm Thursday 21 November 2019

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