Diane Atkinson - Sculpture Season 2010

Diane Atkinson’s exhibition, opening on March 25, utilises the New Zealand landscape to consider the historical reshaping of land and the position of culture within it. Her sculptures of seed heads and landforms, empty boxes and bird houses pose questions about our interaction with nature and examine what it means to cultivate the land, depending on a culture’s perception of improvement.

The 2010 Sculpture Season, at ST PAUL St Gallery Three, is an opportunity to experience the diversity of current sculptural practice in New Zealand. Over the course of the season new work from eleven artists; William Hsu, Kah Bee Chow, Clara Chon, Carol Lee-Honson, Tiffany Rewa Newrick, Diane Atkinson, Museum of True History (MOTH), Erica van Zon, Anthony Cribb, Agnes So and Nick Spratt, will presented in six two week long exhibitions.

Throughout the season the artists will connect with the idea of sculpture in many ways. Making works that range from hand laboured models and exquisitely crafted objects, to ephemeral performative actions such as trying to capture light, or define a sculptural space by filling it with movement; their works trace a trajectory between two trends in sculptural engagement, on one end the production of the sculptural object, and on the other, its de-materialisation

The artists present multiple possibilities for engaging with the world through sculpture. Accessing disciplines as diverse as history, sociology, philosophy, politics, botany, ecology and geology they use the process of research to expand the arena of their art. They meld this research with the personal gesture or action, through this stepping away from the academic connotations of research and accessing forms of communication predicated on the idiosyncratic experiment, the personal connection and the heroic task.