Approaching the Narrows

Clive Kelly’s recent series of paintings demonstrate his long held fascination with contrasts of surface and depth, stillness and movement and the joint themes of containment and protection. These works explore the spiritual beauty and turbulent history of the confiscated lands of Te Urewera, the turangawaewae of the Tῡhoe people, an area crisscrossed by the tracks of missionaries, troops and European settlers for the last 200 years. The Narrowsis a geographical feature on Lake Waikaremoana.

The artist explains that ‘ the use of passages, pools and bunkers become symbols for security, containment, freedom and fear, echoing the contrasts of stillness and depth in the human condition. There exists a sense of deliverance and tranquility at once feared and desired’.