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BECK WHEELER
MEDIUM: MIXED-MEDIA
BASED: PIHA
Beck Wheeler was born in Germany and moved to England and then to New Zealand as a young child. She studied Visual Arts here before moving to Australia in 2000 to work in Melbourne as a multi-disciplinary artist. By combining toy making, textiles and woodworking techniques, Beck produces her whimsical characters based on people she has met and conversations overheard.
On returning to New Zealand in 2009 Beck set up her home studio in Piha and became inspired by the different textures in nature. “New Zealand’s landscape is bursting with life, colour and texture. The house I live in is being swallowed up by bush on all sides.”
Beck is a tutor at CEAC. “I aim to stay in touch with my childhood imagination. Over the years I have done a number of drawing workshops and toy making workshops with children and young people and am constantly inspired by the way children draw, colour-in and talk about what they are drawing.” Beck’s enjoyment in expressing her inner child is reflected in her sculptures through their vibrant colours and over all playfulness.
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TRUDI KING
MEDIUM: MULTI-MEDIA
BASED: HELENSVILLE
Trudi King, winner of the Rodney Supreme Art Award for 2007, is a contemporary photographer with a preoccupation with houses, their history and human inhabitants, past and present. Her images have been accumulated over time. She says:
Our homes are considered, by some, to be an extension of ourselves, reflecting our personalities, our wealth and our social standing. This has been so since the first colonial settlers arrived…For me old buildings have stories to tell, etched into them over time… (yet) walls do not talk… Doors and windows are the faces of these buildings giving them personality with their decoration, or lack of…
Windows, and doorways, shuttered, with curtains, torn or non existent, are the markers of ‘soul’ for these dwellings. With their varying structures, styles and hints of space within, they carry the personality of a house and seem to provide a point of entry. However, unlike the view through a window in an Edward Hopper painting or a Peter Siddell villa, we are denied knowledge of the world inside. Enigma characterises these selections of house detail and structure. Her cubic and triangular format suggests the abstract, universal, notion of the ‘house’. The information within, however, invites us to reconsider and contemplate the history but more often, mystery, of the houses we live in and pass on our own journeys. |
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ANDREW HALL
MEDIUM: SCULPTURE
BASED: WEST AUCKLAND
Originally from the UK, Andrew Hall moved to New Zealand in 1966 and has lived in West Auckland for most of his life.
By his own admission he has a ‘limitless overpowering imagination’ and finds potential and possibility in just about everything he sees.
Andrew creates intriguing and much admired sculptures made entirely from reused and recycled items that he has horded and assembled over the years.
A sculptor who has been described as having a shed full of junk that he uses for art – Andrew has had much success from exhibiting his work and has won many awards. His sculptures have also been purchased both nationally and internationally.
Andrew is well known in the West Auckland community due to his involvement in various workshops and festivals where he inspires the public to develop their imagination and inventive skills to create works of art from recycled ‘found’ materials.
The Gallery Shop currently stocks a selection of Andrews recycled sculptures for sale. |