Field
recordings

Opening Friday 20 February, 5.30pm
Simon Ingram and Patrick Lundberg in conversation 

In terms of audio, field recording describes the gathering of sound from outside the recording studio. Originally developed as a documentary research tool, more generally it is a method of collecting information specific to an environment or place. In contemporary art, it can be used as a way to engage new narratives, forms and readings.

Simon Ingram often uses electromagnetic energy as the information input for his work with machines. With customised tools, he records and interprets the amplitude of various radio spectra to generate paintings that are at once representational and abstract. For this exhibition, Ingram has taken audio recordings at sites around the central city of Christchurch, areas of demolition or construction, to create diagrams that track the constant change necessitated by the rebuild.

Raewyn Martyn emphasises the ambient details of a site—in this case the rear gallery space. Seeking out and reconfiguring specific features, patterns of light and signs of use, she has layered paint on the existing surfaces, peeling parts back to transform surface into material. This editing or sampling process was undertaken without natural light, the final work to be revealed only in the last moments of installation. Martyn’s mark making echoes what was already there, at times displacing elements around the room, and shifts temporality by allowing surface and image to be flexible. These adaptations and insertions cause us to question and reflect on our assumed knowledge of a space, the painterly, temporal and spatial ground.

Patrick Lundberg intervenes in the gallery by introducing discrete objects, disturbing in their sheer delicacy. No title, 8 parts (2015) is precisely installed, so while the intricate components demand close observation they simultaneously hold the negative space. They are specifically scattered, arranged in relation to the architecture, deftly negotiating the strong physical presence of the latter. Nodes of activity, points to which a range of broader ideas are collected and condensed, they also imply a record of time—that of their making and of being received.

Simon Ingram is an Auckland based abstract artist sufficiently interested in culture and society to develop tools that draw aspects of these realms into a painting practice in diagrammatic and situational ways. His work has been exhibited at PS1 MoMA (US), Frankfurter Kunsterverien (DE), Kunsterverien Medienturm (AT), Artspace (AU), The Suburban (US), and The Physics Room (NZ). A monograph of his work entitled "Painting Machines" has recently been published by Kerber Verlag. He currently teaches at Elam.

Patrick Lundberg (born Stockholm, 1984) was the 2014 Frances Hodgkins Fellow. Recent exhibitions include Games III, Station, Melbourne; A world undone, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and No Future Probable, Ivan Anthony, Auckland.

Raewyn Martyn (born Oamaru, 1981) grew up around the South Island. Martyn studied fine art at Massey University in Wellington, secondary teaching at Victoria University, and painting and printmaking at VCUArts in Richmond (VA). Raewyn is currently visiting assistant professor of visual art at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.