Exhibition

Andrea Gardner

1-25 October 2015

Toi Gallery, Pataka Art + Museum Andrea Gardner - Refiguring the Picturesque

In the tradition of 19 ^th century landscape painting the Pastoral and the Picturesque celebrated nature as a comforting source of physical and spiritual sustenance. Glistening lakes, grazing animals, warm light illuminating meadows and trees, the occasional craggy peak and waterfall…all signs of a natural world at peace with itself. This romantic view is explored in Refiguring the Picturesque but with an awareness of 21 ^st century concerns. These works investigate how we perceive nature in a contemporary context and the ever-growing presence of man-made elements (particularly plastic) in the environment. Gardner explores the tension between domesticity and nature, artifice and reality, and the familiar juxtaposed with the unexpected.