RALPH HOTERE EXHIBITION

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33058, 27 October 1972, Page 15

RALPH HOTERE EXHIBITION

Fifteen paintings by a Dunedin artist. Ralph Hotere, are being exhibited in the downstairs gallery of the Canterbury Society of Arts building. In 1969 Mr Hotere held the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship at The University of Otago. The paintings in this exhibition are all of a standard size, 48in x 48in, and were completed in Mr Hotere’s Port Chalmers studio in April. They relate to his "Zero" series painted in 1966-67, and his black paintings produced during 1968-69. Each work relies for its visual effect on extremely subtle changes cf tone within an equally subtle range of blacks and browns. Often the only pictorial clement is a hollow square or circle and in some cases, Nos 4 and 10 for example, there is additional content in tne form of a finely scribed coloured cross. In No. 15 there is also a

freely painted passage, an echo of the physical world that could relate to hill forms.

Part of the quality of these paintings should be their immaculate presentation but somewhere in transit many of the canvases have sagged so that lines originally intended to be taut have become wavy, thereby minimising the intended effect. The exhibition will remain open until November 12. —G.T.M.