Exhibition Program

Sandra Hussey

Containing Chance

Sandra Hussey is a South Canterbury painter based in Timaru. In 2018
she graduated with a MFA from the University of Canterbury
To produce these paintings I sought to harness the fluid potential of the
medium in mimesis of natural processes and to explore their intersection
with the formal language of painting
I am drawn to playing with both the enormity of scale and intimacy of the
very small. Elements of screen printing and collage are assimilated with
the work. Randomness, chance and its containment are integral to the
process

Ben Reid 

Birds of Paradise

Michael Armstrong 

Five New Paintings

“My realization today,” says Armstrong, “is that, in my current work, any particular work may be
finished in one of several different manners. The works begin and develop as broadly handled colour
abstractions, but according to my own mood, determination, or vagary, may end by being solved in
one of several modes. Of staying as an abstract, another of being people by figures, mobs, and
rioters, of becoming an apocalyptic seascape, or of an architectural projection of a sort. All hint at a

climate change apocalypse and the different potential responses or outcomes, from scenes devoid
of life, to scenes where humans are responding as unpredictable and unmanageable humans. This is
not a conceptual game on my part, but my painterly response to the issues we face.”
Even so, Armstrong’s colourism and formal frivolity suggest a hope for humanity that hasn’t entirely
been extinguished. It is impossible to love colour and not have an element of optimism in the soul.
One can not be a humanist and not still have hope.