Opening Event: 5.30-7pm Monday 7 November 2022.
“Port Levy’s Got Talent” is a collection of works by six artists residing in the beautiful Port Levy community on the Banks Peninsula.
Although they explore a diverse range of media and creative expressions, they all have one thing in common: they are inspired by the love of their unique environment, believing that they capture the spirit of a time and place.
“Port Levy’s Got Talent” showcases the diversity and artistic integrity that has developed largely due to their isolated rural location; if necessity is the mother of all inventions, then isolation is the bearer of creativity.
Potter Jim Barribeau, Weaver Karyn Davis, Sculptor Maria Lee, Multimedia Artist Verity Scarlett, Glass Artist Emily Napolitano & Painter Jacqui Gibbs-Chamberlain.
Jim Barribeau first started working with clay decades ago after he walked across Cornwall as a student and visited the Leach Pottery in St. Ives. The aesthetic that Leach and Hamada promoted with both classic Asian forms and glazes linked with the English tradition and this informs Jim’s work. Jim is particularly interested in ash glazes and experiments with locally sourced ashes; cabbage tree, walnut, flax, and manuka, for example.
Karyn Davis has been fascinated by textiles for many years; the colours, textures, patterns, and the interplay between these. Karyn recently began to weave and has been exploring these aspects from a creator’s point-of-view as opposed to a observer’s point-of view. Karyn finds inspiration in nature and from travelling to regions where textiles have been produced for hundreds of years – Kashmir & West Bengal, India and Laos.
Maria Lee has continued to push the limits of the stone, in both form and finish, while also exploring the boundaries between raw rock and smooth manipulated polished finished stone. Maria’s early stone works were purely functional pieces but as her skills developed, she has been exploring female sensual forms and positive expressions of sexuality. Sensual softness juxtaposing the rigidity of stone; the strength and violence required to create a piece that appears soft and invites touch.
Verity Scarlett takes inspiration from nature, real life observations and a passion for natural objects turn into art. Verity has been drawing, painting and sculpting from very young and has exhibited in her country of birth, New Zealand, and in the UK where she lived for 19 years. Verity is passionately committed to daydreaming and it is during this time that she creates and designs her next project, painting, or subject matter.
Emily Napolitano moved from Chicago to New Zealand in 2010. Emily has explored the limits of soft glass in creating glass beads in a variety of shapes and sizes, recently creating a series of Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls, looking at the relationship between our bones, our life essence, and the transition to the Other Side.
Jacqui Gibbs-Chamberlain’s series is a development from previous work as she layer colour and charcoal to create a multi-dimensional, translucent look. More than ever, Jacqui has let the charcoal take centre stage – in it’s perfectly undone form. With the theme of “unprecedented times” in mind, this series is the expression of the questions, hopes and dreams that have been left to linger over the last two years of covid.