OPENING EVENT: Wednesday, 16 July, 5.30 - 7.30pm
EXHIBITION: 16 July - 9 August 2025
New work by Hawkes Bay based artist John Brown - his first solo exhibition with the gallery.
"My work explores the relationship between landscape, memory, and history through abstract paintings. I draw on the visual languages of Cubism and Regionalism to create layered, structured compositions that reflect the shifting nature of place and identity.
My recent body of work, ‘Fore and Aft’, considers how the past shapes our experience of the present particularly through landscape. The title is drawn from nautical terminology, referring to the front and rear of a vessel.
Here, it becomes a metaphor and a way of thinking about movement and orientation across land, through time, and within collective memory. It speaks to how we navigate the spaces we inhabit: always moving forward yet shaped by what lies behind. This tension between direction and memory, between stillness and change sits at the heart of the work.
Although abstract, my paintings are grounded in the cultural and physical terrain. They reflect an awareness of the Māori world and the deep interconnection between people and whenua, land as a living presence, carrying knowledge, belonging, and history. I’m interested in how abstraction can hold narrative without describing it directly, how structure, rhythm, and absence can suggest the quiet imprint of story."
John Brown is a Hawkes Bay based painter. He was the 2019 winner of the Molly Morpeth Art Prize and the 2012 recipient of the Kaipara Foundation Wallace Trust Award with a three month residency in Switzerland. He has exhibited extensively throughout Aotearoa since the late 90s and has works in private collections throughout Australasia.
To register interest or to enquire:
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www.melanierogergallery.com
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