Explore Local Art at Sudima Auckland City

In April 1958, Colin McCahon travelled to the US, responding both to the expansiveness of the American landscape and to the modern American paintings that he saw in museums. On his return, his works increased in scale while economizing in gesture: the landscape elements of tomorrow have been reduced to a horizon and lowering sky, with the land bisected by a grey river. He converted his Titirangi garage into a studio, and built an extra bedroom for his children underneath. The studio was gloomy – there was only one small side window for light when the garage door was closed – but it precipitated dozens of new works. Tomorrow was an unfortunate painting, said McCahon, ‘in that it wouldn’t go right, and I got madder and madder. I hurled a whole lovely quart tin of black Dulux at the board and reconstructed the painting out of the mess.’ The black paint (a commercial flooring paint, mixed with sand) dripped down the surface of the work and ran between wide cracks in the studio floorboards, ruining clothes and bed linen in his sons’ room below. He finally finished the painting in May 1959.

- Courtesy of Christchurch Art Gallery

Jhunjhnuwala's installations are about a conversation between the ideas of the ephemeral and the permanent. One is about the tactile experience where one has the desire to touch the pigment and physically experience the work. While the other is about the visual experience, where given a few moments in front of these seductive works; the spectator is inevitably drawn by fleeting intangible moods. The perspex contains or shields the pigment from the touch. Jhunjhnuwala was also interested in the relationship between the reflective hard surface of the perspex, which captures the bouncing light and transitory images of the surroundings and the viewer experiencing the work, whereas the matt porous, delicate and fragile pigment creates pulsating evanescent expressions. These bodies of work are about revealing the universal truth about the material, journey and celebration of life.

Straka believes that there is gentle humour in this series. This awkward character is someone familiar to us all, tugging gently on his pants, manning something that’s unmanned. Sort of belonging and out of place all at the same time.