I LOVE YOU TO DISTRACTION new takes on abstraction Alexandra Kennedy Miranda Parkes 23 Oct - 17 Nov 2009 Artists will be attending the opening we hope to see you there too!

I Love You to Distraction presents the freshly squeezed juiciness of abstract painting for the 21st Century. Alexandra Kennedy and Miranda Parkes confirm that the revered genre of abstract painting is certainly flourishing in its current state. Mindful of history while demonstrating a range of original and distinctive approaches, the artists engage with the formal and ideological principals of modernist abstraction. Line, colour and pared-back form are reworked and reinvigorated, spatial innovations and an underlying grid structure emerging as central concerns in the work of both Kennedy and Parkes.

Alexandra Kennedy’s practice is ‘located between painting and drawing, between object and process’ (1). Her fluid, multi-directional paintings have a remarkable sense of spatial depth. The canvases, crosshatched in dense scribbles and scrawls of paint combine the physical act of painting with that of the digital age. In Butterfly Effect, glimpsed through a thicket of forest green, emerge stems of mauve, grey and pink; causing the eye to search for beginnings, endings and the mysterious paths or possibilities within the maze like composition. An appetizing confection of colour and line, Kennedy’s paintings are seemingly spontaneous and consequently expressionist in mode. In actuality, Kennedy’s compositions are a construct of computer programming transferred by hand to the canvas; they are an oxymoron of structured spontaneity cleverly merging the virtual with the material.

Synonymous for her innovative scrunched and crumpled sculptural paintings, Miranda Parkes stripes and lashes of succulent colour, interrupted by billowy folds reconfigure the picture plane. Parkes is the current Tylee Cottage Resident in Wanaganui and this has given her the opportunity to experiment on a sustained and exciting new body of works. Here we see her incorporating expressionist and gestural painting with a central structured grid formation. While these deconstructive works swing in opposition to the ‘scrunched’ series, their bright candy coloured deck-chair stripes and patterns retain the energy and movement of her previous sculptural works. The Op-art visual effect of brightly coloured lozenge shapes in Bubbleover appears to breath in and out while Juggler provides a sense of discord through cut and reconfigured circular sections which tip and break the linear composition. Parkes does not disappoint with this series of mouth-watering works that counterpoise contour, line and colour to generate her trademark sense of playful tension and uncertainty.

Alexandra Kennedy Blue Line (2009) oil on canvas 1000x1000mm	Alexandra Kennedy Far Out (2009) oil on canvas 1000x1000mm	Alexandra Kennedy Flattened Space (2009) oil on canvas 1000x1000mm

Alexandra Kennedy Butterfly Effect (2009) oil on canvas 1000x1000mm	Alexandra Kennedy No Way (2009) oil on canvas 1000x1000mm	Alexandra Kennedy Way Out (2009) oil on canvas 1000x1000mm

Alexandra Kennedy Wayward (2009) oil on canvas 1000x1000mm	Alexandra Kennedy Phases of Space (2009) (with detail on right) oil on canvas 1840x1220mm

Miranda Parkes Untitled (2009) acrylic on canvas 420x502x110mm	Miranda Parkes Raver (2009) acrylic on canvas 900x900x300 mm	Miranda Parkes Untitled (2009) acrylic on canvas 200x235x70 mm

Miranda Parkes Juggler (2009) oil on board 1000x1000x50mm	Miranda Parkes Bubbleover (2009) (with detail on right) oil on board 800x800x25mm	Miranda Parkes Sunjunkie (2009) oil and enamel on board 522x530x37mm

Alexandra Kennedy studied painting at Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury and more recently graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts from Dunedin School of Art. She has been painting and exhibiting since the mid 1990s and is currently Lecturer in History and Theory of Art at the School of Art, Dunedin. Kennedy gained the Bickerton Widdowston Memorial Trust Scholarship while studying at Canterbury University and was a finalist in the James Wallace Awards in 2004 & 2007. Her practice also encompasses writing on contemporary painting, in 2008 receiving the Australian LIMINA Journal- Iain Brash Prize for best submission in Australia or New Zealand. Recent published articles and conference papers focus on issues such as the “end of subject matter” and contemporary “zero gestures” in painting.

Miranda Parkes has exhibited regularly throughout New Zealand in both public and dealer galleries. She completed a Masters in Fine Art from the University of Canterbury in 2005. Parkes is the recipient of numerous scholarships and residencies including the Ethel Rose Overton Scholarship, University of Canterbury, 2003 and 2004, Ethel Susan Jones Travelling Scholarship, University of Canterbury, 2005 and the William Hodges Fellowship, Southland, 2006. She is included in Warwick Brown's recent publication Seen this Century and participated in Telecom Prospect 2007 (City Gallery, Wellington). Her work is held in private and public collections including the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu. Parkes is the current Tylee Cottage resident in Wanganui.

(1) Kennedy, Artist Statement, 2009

Catalogue essay by Lydia Baxendell 2009