Paintings and photographs

Press, 2 July 1986, Page 20

Paintings and photographs

A painter who lives in Italy and a photographer who used to raise catfish are exhibiting at the James Paul Gallery this week. Not that either background has a great deal to. do with the subjects chosen by the two for their work. Beverley Goodwin is a New Zealander who grew up in Hastings and in 1967 went to Italy to study Italian. She travelled on to London to begin art studies but soon returned to Italy where she studied art and worked. In 1981 she married an Italian sculptor and artist, Antonio di Tommaso. Based in Florence, but at present visiting New Zealand, she is one of the best known foreign artists in Italy. She returned to New Zealand this year for a short term residency in the Rita Angus Cottage in Wellington. She has exhibited in Wellington. That, and her Christchurch show, are the first exhibitions in her native country since 1982. Of her current work she says, “I have been working for the last six years on what I call the inner landscape series which began with the development of the water world.” Coloured forms under water brought a series of memory landscapes of New Zealand. The painter developed the landscape as layers of coloured memories. The memories then were depicted in coloured written words. The artist says she was trying to colour in the formed images within her memory patterns. Her present series focuses on the white sheet, as she tries to discover its function as the neutral space in colour patterns. She is working with a “drapes” theme as she tries to draw back the curtains to reveal the inner stage and how

things work within in terms of colour. Julie Riley’s photographs were taken during January at Maori Gardens on Banks Peninsula. Twelve assemblages have been mounted, each unit comprising two to 12 photographs. The photographer has mounted several pictures together for three reasons. She is attempting to break out of the compositional conventions Imposed by the 35mm window. She also wants to increase the amount of information in each unit and spread the focus away from the centre. .The idea behind the latter is to force, the viewer into a random discovery of information closer to viewing with the normal eye. Julie Riley wants each frame to be seen alone, fusing imperfectly with its neighbours at the viewers’ will. A part-time lecturer at Christchurch’s Photographic Training Centre, Julie Riley studied photography at the University of Canterbury from 1980 to 1985. Older than the average student, she had travelled and worked overseas. Jobs included starting and running a catfish hatchery in Alabama. Since training as a photographer, she has worked as a freelance photojournalist She has taken photographs for several magazines and has exhibited four times before. Her work includes a photo essay for the “Listener” on the Waikari Country Hospital. This year she received a grant from the Queen 'Elizabeth II Arts Council under its new artists promotion scheme. Both exhibitions opened on Monday and will run until July 12. The gallery is at 567 Colombo Street