Mar 23 - April 21, 2018
Miranda Parkes is a self-described maximalist. This doesn't mean we see everything bar the kitchen sink, for she is a thoughtful artist - a canny operator even. But what it does mean is that she seeks in her work a directness of expression, handles a range of materials with mighty honesty, and tends to a palette that is exuberant and high key.
The merrier was her Frances Hodgkins Fellowship show at the Hocken in 2017. This is the merriest. It is a re-iteration of that earlier exhibition but with additional work. For this is not the abstraction of pared back modernism - it is wonderfully democratic and happily inclusive. The merriest includes a range of beautifully sewn hand-dyed silks: the elegant diptych display table liners and antibody banner which here roams 8.2 metres along the south wall. It includes "the mash-ups" as Parkes calls them, a vibrant suite of two-sided paintings created out of papier-mâché. Upon these Parkes has unleashed her full range of mark-making skills, from line carefully masked and playfully poured, to colour fields densely layered and more transparent, and to other areas lightly angle-sprayed. Images from a book on Versailles are deftly manipulated. Even two of "baby-daddy's dropsheets" are stretched, retouched and made into paintings.
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List of works
antibody banner, 2017
hand dyed silk 8200 x 2730mm
display table liners, 2017 (2 pieces)
hand dyed silk and cotton approx 1600 x 2100mm
inclusions, 2017 (floor work - 11 pieces)
acrylic on glass and steel stands dimensions variable
baby-daddy drop sheet: xerox, 2017
fence stain, acrylic & varnish on canvas 2200 x 1790mm
baby daddy drop sheet: cosmic, 2017
fence stain and acrylic on canvas 1800 x 1800mm
going hard, 2018
acrylic on canvas 700 x 700 x 280mm
Formosa, 2018
acrylic on canvas 700 x 700 x 280mm
all nighter, 2017
acrylic on papier-mâché 730 x 650mm
bone jumper / max key, 2017
acrylic on papier-mâché 730 x 650mm
air jewel / trans phats, 2017
acrylic on papier-mâché 730 x 650mm
rush, 2018
acrylic and indian ink on papier-mâché 650 x 500mm
under the pump / pink boi, 2017
acrylic and indian ink on papier-mâché 650 x 500mm
raw celestial / the maximalist, 2017
acrylic on papier-mâché 350 x 290mm
miss thing / mou mou, 2017
acrylic and indian ink on papier-mâché 250 x 200mm
Papatūānuku piece / weekend press, 2017
acrylic and indian ink on papier-mâché 250 x 200mm
present tenses / wilke's land, 2017
acrylic and indian ink on papier-mâché 350 x 290mm
your proof, 2017
acrylic and indian ink on papier-mâché 350 x 290mm
underwater creature adventure, 2017
acrylic and indian ink on papier-mâché 245 x 245mm
normal miracle / Charlie Brown, 2017
acrylic and indian ink on papier-mâché 250 x 200mm
sugar / and spice, 2017
acrylic and watercolour on papier-mâché 250 x 200mm
robbing peter / department of the interior, 2017
acrylic, enamel and indian ink on papier-mâché 350 x 290mm
Versailles, 2016
acrylic & ink on book pages, 1 - 22 180 x 115 / 180 x 180 / 180 x 225mm
