Painter Simon Vine exhibits works of art held at the Wanganui Arts Society

Art painter Simon Vine shares some of his works in a gallery in Whanganui after taking them out of storage in his mother’s garage.

Vine was born and raised in Whanganui, leaving in 1991
go to the University.

He’s back in town to visit his mother over the Christmas / New Year period, and the works he had stored in his garage are now on display at the Wanganui Arts Society gallery in Trafalgar Pl.

“I filed the work about three years ago, and then I went overseas,” Vine said.

“I came back to visit Mom for Christmas and thought if the Arts Society building was empty it would be a good excuse to spend a few more days with her and get some exercise.

“I’m going to take that [exhibition] January 11th, then I’ll cycle to Auckland to get some more exercise. “

Vine studied English Literature and Philosophy and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1997. He went on to earn a Masters of Fine Arts from Whitecliffe College of Art and Design in 2009.

His “Retrospective” exhibition at the Wanganui Arts Society features paintings from 2006 to 2017, some of which are minimal white portraits made during his master’s project.

“It has always been a study of the representation of human form and figure. They are not specific portraits of individuals, although the idea of ​​the portrait interests me.

“I’m not really into true and realistic representations of individuals. The process was to work as quickly as possible, be satisfied with it as a Gestalt or functional representation, then put it down and start another one in order to ‘improve technique.

“I did this for a few years and went crazy.”

Vine said the works of the masters in the exhibition were aimed “at achieving the simplest, most functional representation” he could find.

“In terms of global ideology [of the exhibition], there really isn’t. There are touches of mythology, and some works have a slightly Symbolist bent.

“For the most part, it’s about not weighing things down with layers of ideology and meaning.

“I used to go on the Internet and look for black and white photographs and collect them. I had files of thousands of these images and I was going through them and I was like ‘this one, this one. there, that one “.

“There is one that I called ‘The Russian Actor’, because it was an old movie from a Russian film from the black and white era. There is another one from a black and white era. clay sculpture of an African woman, and the one at the end is a bust of Julius Caesar. “

In his masters, he spent time talking about the evolution of representation during the Roman period, Vine said.

“It became a propaganda tool for some emperors, and their portrayal was central to every Roman city throughout the empire. It used to be coins, then it became marble.

“Their practice of taking death masks from patriarchs and hanging them on the hall wall really influenced people’s expectations for sculpture and changed the way the Romans did figurative sculpture.

“I kind of alluded to the fact that it had an effect on our psyche of the photographs. I was talking about it 10 years ago and look at it now, so photorealistic is the figurative representation. the knees of the bee.

“It’s a technique beyond me, it takes too many hours.”

For the past two years, Vine has taught English as a Foreign Language in Prague, Czech Republic.

“Having a New Zealand passport is the reason I’m back here, otherwise I would be locked in a room in the Czech Republic and more and more in debt.

“There was a big push [of Covid-19] there right after I left and they’re in full lockdown again.

“Everything seems so normal here, but there is a feeling that things are a little calmer in New Zealand at the moment. That isolation has increased a notch.

“Who knows what’s going to happen next?” “

Simon Vine’s “Retrospective” exhibition will be on display at the Whanganui Arts Society in Trafalgar Pl until January 11.

To see more of his work, go to www.simon-vine.com