Glam rockers and skeletons the latest Waikato exhibition

These may seem unlikely bed fellows but the latest exhibition at the Calder & Lawson Gallery at the University of Waikato is the perfect setting for surprising combinations says university art curator Karl Chitham. The exhibition is called New Romantics and explores ideas of danger, mystery and desire.

Featuring the work of six contemporary New Zealand artists, New Romantics exposes some of the darker visions alongside those with a more tongue-in-cheek appeal.

“Sam Mitchell, Paramount Award Winner of the 2010 Wallace Art Awards, offers a clever take on the singing sensations Sonny & Cher and T-Rex,” says Chitham. “Covered with tattoos of roses, super heroes and the Jetsons, these musical icons were known for promoting ideas of free love and glamorous excess.”

Another artist in the exhibition, Niki Hastings-McFall shows a different side to the ins and outs of love. Her cheerful skeletons and skulls, nestled amongst fake flowers look like the tributes left at graves by family and friends. “These works are a celebration. Questioning how we look at things like death and love,” says Chitham.

Emerging artists Kathryn Tsui and Emma Smith, offer more left-field approaches that include glass collected from car crash scenes and made into beautiful photographic kaleidoscopes, and a series of collages based on the trials and tribulations of a collection of characters that live in a submerged forest.

More established artist Graham Fletcher creates faux primitive sculptures that wouldn’t look out of place in a retro interior of the 1950s or on the set of the voodoo/vampire dark romance television hit True Blood. “Made from an assortment of discarded wood off-cuts and things scavenged from around his studio, these ambiguous artworks play games with your mind,” says Chitham.

The New Romantics exhibition had its fair share of heartache. The delicate ink drawings of Christchurch artist Zina Swanson only just made it to the exhibition when her studio and archive of over 10 years work was destroyed in the March earthquake. “It was fantastic that Zina was ok and that she was able to still take part in the show.”

Karl Chitham is keen for the local community to see what’s happening in the contemporary art scene in New Zealand and to look at art in different ways, “This exhibition flips ideas about romance on their head and is a great introduction to the way art can be read on a number of levels.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication with an essay by Dr Gareth Schott a lecturer at the University of Waikato and editor of the book Fanpires, looking at the phenomenon of the vampire in popular media. New Romantics runs until 19^th June at the Calder & Lawson Gallery at the Academy of Performing Arts.