Coming Home in the Dark – Christchurch Art Gallery – Exhibitions Archive 2004
I am looking forward to going to this exhibition. I live & breathe this underbelly. That is a psychotherapist’s job I guess. My pespective is more depressing than that though. I am a vegitarian in a land dominated by the economics of meat production, and when I see the green hills I see destruction of the original forest plus the destruction of animals and the destruction of our waterways. Hard to enjoy the coutryside. There must be something wrong with me when I feel like this in paradise.
Lurking behind the South Islands legendary picture-postcard views and the stoic jaw of the Southern Man is a dark side a gothic underbelly of paranoia, alienation, and unease. This quality, evident in the work of some of New Zealands most talented artists and writers, is explored in a new exhibition, inspired by and named after one of Owen Marshalls most sinister short stories. Coming Home in the Dark taps the shadowy vein running through the work of fourteen artists with a connection to the Mainland: Leo Bensemann, Barry Cleavin, Bing Dawe, Margaret Dawson, Tony de Lautour, Tony Fomison, Jason Greig, Bill Hammond, Colin McCahon, Trevor Moffitt, Bruce Russell, Ann Shelton, Ronnie van Hout and Dean Venrooy.
