BIG-LITTLE EXCHANGES
Visit Nikau Superette Art Project Online
2 Queen Mary Avenue. New Lynn.
2-6 December, 2024.

Supported by @artswhau and run by @in_laing_in​

During this project, five of my paintings were installed consecutively in the micro gallery for a week each. The space is a restored and repurposed community notice board attached to a side of the Superette. This is a suburban place at the intersection between enterprise and ecology where the community encounters issues around migration, digital displacement, security and community. 

I lived two streets up from this Superette many years ago and immediately felt at home when I visited to photograph the location during initial research and while documenting the installation of each painting. When arriving to photograph 'Contingent' for documentation, I had to park down the road on a side street because of unforeseen water pipe maintenance, necessary work that only occurs under certain circumstances at certain times. My route to approach and photograph the painting was altered from that of the previous visit contingent on the arrangement of road work barriers, providing another perspective on the relationships between artist, painting, site and community. Throughout the month-long exhibition period, my encounters at the location were consistently subject to chance on the suburban street and pavement area outside Nikau Superette. ​

'Congregate', in situ. Each time I visited I found the bread baskets and crates in a different configuration—a surprise installation of colour and form.

‘Contingent’, paints and mediums on board, 1145mm x 450mm, refers to the way my body, paints, and the substrate interrelate unpredictably but also to communal spaces as touch-points where unexpected and affective events play out. Gestural traces of my actions are imbued with manifestations of care, reflecting my awareness of the necessity to support this community’s physical and social infrastructure.

Borrowed Colour
To make these paintings I focused on my body’s reactions to borrowed colour, the influence of the box’s dimensions and familiar textures from the immediate environs.

Borrowing colour is part of my creative process and involves creating a palette of colour swatches from photographs of the Superette. My extracted colours from the Superette's exterior abstract its appearance; however, the tones possess a connection to the place they came from. When I borrow the neutrals and brights in my painting, they retain qualities present at the original site while allowing new relationships to form within the studio and, again, onsite when installed as a painting in the noticeboard window.