Lewis Ihnatko & Mark Maurangi Carrol
Recent Paintings
Works
Lewis Ihnatko’s paintings carry a very present but open-ended narrative. The works elicit muddied and mixed emotions. The subjects are at times intensely funny but also harrowing. Through their curious charm, the paintings draw you in and invite introspection and empathy for the characters. Ihnattko depicts scenes of intimacy and vulnerability through the subject matter and the painterly gesture. Ihnatko’s idiosyncratic depiction of the human subjects and the fantasy-like spaces they exist in, intentionally obscure the unexpressed concept of the works. These tense psychodramatic paintings are ultimately influenced by the artist’s abstract fears, anxieties and the beauty Ihnatko sees in the world.
Mark Maurangi Carrol works primarily within the field of painting. Trained as a printmaker, the works are process-based and utilise oil-based enamels and permanent marker soaked into the reverse surface of the loom-state linen supports. In his practice, Carrol experiments with chance-based methodologies, cultural memory and experience through traditional methods of pāreu and tivaevae dying and staining, a process learnt through his experiences traveling to his mother’s country of birth in the Cook Islands.
The principal themes surrounding Carrol's work are the result of his ongoing investigation into virtual space and its cultural and historical implications on the visual language of pictoral phenomena. Themes of the virtual encounter, desire, loneliness, identity, and anonymity are composed from a combination of collected images and words set within composite landscapes created from remembered places, and vast simulated acres of digital space accessed through ageing software. These sources are decontextualised and removed from their intended functionality and reassembled into disjointed fragments of semi-self-referential and familial figures within the familiar, uncanny spaces of recreated memory
Recent Paintings
28 October – 13 November 2022
Works
Installation views
Press release
Lewis Ihnatko’s paintings carry a very present but open-ended narrative. The works elicit muddied and mixed emotions. The subjects are at times intensely funny but also harrowing. Through their curious charm, the paintings draw you in and invite introspection and empathy for the characters. Ihnattko depicts scenes of intimacy and vulnerability through the subject matter and the painterly gesture. Ihnatko’s idiosyncratic depiction of the human subjects and the fantasy-like spaces they exist in, intentionally obscure the unexpressed concept of the works. These tense psychodramatic paintings are ultimately influenced by the artist’s abstract fears, anxieties and the beauty Ihnatko sees in the world.
Mark Maurangi Carrol works primarily within the field of painting. Trained as a printmaker, the works are process-based and utilise oil-based enamels and permanent marker soaked into the reverse surface of the loom-state linen supports. In his practice, Carrol experiments with chance-based methodologies, cultural memory and experience through traditional methods of pāreu and tivaevae dying and staining, a process learnt through his experiences traveling to his mother’s country of birth in the Cook Islands.
The principal themes surrounding Carrol's work are the result of his ongoing investigation into virtual space and its cultural and historical implications on the visual language of pictoral phenomena. Themes of the virtual encounter, desire, loneliness, identity, and anonymity are composed from a combination of collected images and words set within composite landscapes created from remembered places, and vast simulated acres of digital space accessed through ageing software. These sources are decontextualised and removed from their intended functionality and reassembled into disjointed fragments of semi-self-referential and familial figures within the familiar, uncanny spaces of recreated memory
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