Breaking down, then building up

Cezanne was the starting point for some of Leek's works. Photo / Dean Purcell

Saskia Leek's selection as a finalist in last year's Walters Prize came as a surprise, given the surrealist whimsy of her earlier work.

Either the curatorial consensus that selects "the outstanding contributions to contemporary New Zealand art" over the two-year cycle had changed, or Leek's work had developed a greater self-consciousness about its artiness.

It turned out the latter was the case, and her first show since the Walters continues her examination of the building blocks of modernism.

There's a naturopathic cubism thing going on, the original essence watered down over a full century to be the chalky ghost of a remedy.

"The cubist thing is the most embarrassing. I'm not really trying to be a faux cubist, it's just how they come out and in some ways the paintings you could read as the most faux cubist are the least interesting," Leek says.

"I think they probably have as much to do with amateurism as cubism, like the first thing you learn at high school about how to take something into abstraction is cubist technique - breaking things down into shapes and colours and building them back up again."

So why take herself back there after two decades as a practising painter since leaving art school in Christchurch? "I'm really interested in the basic building blocks of painting."

Leek paints on her small hardboard rectangles flat on a desk, shifting composition and colours around until she is satisfied.

"I work on them over a long period of time and so the colours change. It is very deliberate that they become what they are and there are so many decisions involved."

She usually works on a number of paintings at a time. The arrival of a baby last year means she now paints in short bursts.

"Tonally they are quite simple, so they are hard to photograph. I don't like shiny paintings. I think I'm used to very flat paintings. That's also why I paint on board rather than canvas, but this may change."

The compositions start from found paintings or prints, some amateur, some by the masters. "They become their own thing after a while. It doesn't make any sense as an image but it is something."

She admits the starting point for some of the works was Cezanne - the driving force of much cubist exploration, and something that would seem to set the bar high for what could be achieved in the pictorial space.

"I literally just used the Cezanne as a starting point in the way I would use any other painting, which seems sort of cheeky."

Other works have faint references to early New Zealand modernism, such as McCahon's French Bay paintings, harking back to an era when artists tried to divine the course of the avant-garde from blurry magazine pictures.

Leek says she's happy with the work. "This is the first show since the Walters and it's really nice to have a show again, to know it is possible again."

In the other half of the gallery, The Other Mother is Ronnie van Hout having fun with his Artists to Antarctica fellowship.

The blue survival suit he was issued for his 2007 trip to the ice was recycled into an installation glimpsed through a small window, and an eight-minute video presents a remake of Arctic horror classic The Thing, with van Hout playing all the parts.

Exhibition

What: A Modern Menu by Saskia Leek

Where and when: Ivan Anthony Gallery, 312 Karangahape Rd, to June 25