Currenty on exhibition at Bellamys Gallery we've got three sets of new work by Emma Chalmers, Pauline Bellamy and Manu Berry.

Pauline and Manu are exhibiting outcomes from the process of designing album covers for local musicians Bill Morris and King Leo. Emma Chalmer's Exhibition Wonder Word showcases the outcomes of her time as Livinia Winters Fellow at the New Pacific Studio Residency programme.
You can find documentation from these exhibitions on our Current page.
Our opening function was blast, it was followed by a concert at the community hall across the road. Art, great food, great company, music and dancing.. what more could you want!

Our artists have had a productive winter, with Pauline and John making several trips to Central Otago to paint the stunning snow capped landscape, Pauline has featured in several exhibitions including the ILT awards , also winning the 'Heart of the South' award with her etching Aramoana at the Otago Art Society's annual exhibition.

Alongside his contribution to our Album cover exhibition, Manu featured in the group exhibition Port Collective at Mint Gallery in Dunedin Central. He currently has a solo exhibition at Mint entitled Prints in Response to the Poems of Richard Reeve. This wonderful show is up until the 6th August.

Emma's hard work over winter is clear to see in Wonder Word, her intricite and thoughful process has resolved some beautiful artworks with a number of stories to tell. Emma is soon to go on an overseas trip to Europe where she looks forward to visiting museums to see some inspirations artworks in the flesh. Have a great trip Emma!

Max has been in the research phase for some upcoming projects, and supporting other artists projects. He recently helped to film the video art project Aggasiz Down Under by visiting international artist Sasha Huber. Soon Max is off the U.S where he will do some travelling and attend the Montello Art Foundation residency programme. 

This week will be your last opportunity to see Fall Light Fall, an exhibition by Manu Berry and Emma Chalmers. Both artists expertly render fleeting moments and subtle hues of our spectacular southern sky and ocean. 
In Gaze IV, Emma Chalmers recreates the incomprehensible depth of the starry night sky.  The duality of this work has to be experienced in person. It is at once a flat void, pulling light and form from all sides into an unchangeable velvet plane, whilst simultaneously creating a depth, texture and wonder that only the night sky can evoke.
The exhibition will conclude on the same night that Bellamys Gallery hosts a concert of Dunedin musicians Kira Hundleby, Matt Langley & Nick Knox. Further info here.

Emma Chalmers, Gave IV (2014) Gouache on Velvet with Nevis Rock, 250 x 150 cm

Last Sunday we celebrated the opening of Fall, Light, Fall, a series of new woodcuts by Manu Berry and paintings by Emma Chalmers. Samantha McKegg attended the opening and reviewed the exhibition in this week's Otago Daily Times. To read Samantha's  review click here:  Fall, Light, Fall. 

A very special retrospective exhibition opened this week at the gallery called Pretty Dreams, Hard Work, Survival. This exhibition covers 50 plus years of Pauline Bellamy's artistic career, curated by Emma Chalmers with accompanying text by Samantha McKegg. 

The exhibition is comprised of two rooms; the first covers the earlier years of Pauline's life and includes pencil sketches from when she was a child and graphic illustrations from when she worked for an ad agency in Hamilton, through to some small but very surreal paintings of the Waitomo Caves. It includes some of her earliest landscape paintings where she's experimenting with oil painting and watercolour aswell as sketch book drawings documenting her trip through Europe and Asia.

The second room covers the second part of her life, a 20-year period in which she becomes a mother and also has to undergo treatment for cancer. All of these events recorded in oils, ink studies, acrylic sketches, pencil drawings and etchings.

The idea to create this exhibition was inspired by a gallery visit from 19 women's studies students from Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, U.S.A. Pauline and Emma presented a 45 minute talk about the exhibition to the group, who were on a 4 week trip around New Zealand with Beth Hackett, Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Nell Ruby, Associate Professor of Art.  

The group were drawing on feminist theory and applied studio practices to explore how issues and images are “framed differently” in the US and New Zealand. 

Pauline Bellamy, Early Horses (1960) circa, pencil on paper, 60 x 47cm

Pauline Bellamy, Fashion Drawings (1960) circa, ink on paper, 73 x 120 cm

Pauline Bellamy, In Search Of God's Thumbprint in Central (1990) circa, oil on board, 74 x 79 cm

Pauline Bellamy, Survival  (1992) charcoal on paper, 54 x 45 cm

Pauline Bellamy, Treatment (1994) oil on board, 52 x 48 cm 

Pauline Bellamy, Manu Reading Hone Tuwhare (1997) ink on paper, 62 x 50 cm

Pretty Dreams – Hard Work – Survival

In June 1975 Alison Mitchell, also known as Allie Eagle – a central figure in the New Zealand woman’s art movement, wrote:

A basic premise needs to be established though, in order to understand the notion of a woman’s art: That is, that while there is in the country at least, as yet, very few stylistic differences between New Zealand women and men painters there are a great many cultural experiences and socio-economic factors that make them quite different.[i]

This notion is relevant to understand the dominance of male artists in New Zealand, and is an experience that in general, has been shared by woman artists in the Western world. As literature was gradually imported from feminist hubs in America, Britain and Australia during the 1970s/1980s, women in New Zealand became conscious of the inconsistencies in the critical treatment of their own art when compared to their male peers. Faced with different social pressures and without the support given to their male counterparts, many women would abandon artistic pursuits for more practical work and home lives.

Early on in her art career, Pauline Bellamy (b. 1950) was not exempt from these pressures. While she had passion to become an artist from a young age, Bellamy enrolled in a commercial graphic arts course in Auckland. Pretty Dreams – Hard Work – Survival, traces Bellamy’s art practice from beginnings as a hobby alongside her commercial art production for advertising agencies to her current position as an established artist, known for her expressive landscapes and portraits, paintings and etchings.

There are two stories that run through the chronology of this exhibition. Firstly, the development of an artist’s practice – from trials and experimentations towards what Bellamy has called “painting competently, contentedly,”[ii] And then concurrently, the story of a woman artist in New Zealand who has been constantly reconciling the external pressures of life with her passion for painting.

Following her graduation from the Auckland Technical Institute (now AUT) in the late 1960s, Bellamy worked producing advertising images for a shoe factory. The controlled and disciplined drawing required of her began to waver in nighttime life drawing classes, where Bellamy, while still portraying technically accurate figurative works, would begin to display her knack for expressing a more emotive depiction of her chosen subject.

Leaving Auckland, and the location of her commercial art training, Bellamy moved to Hamilton and then to the South Island. Bellamy was often isolated as a practicing artist and without much outside influence her works could have retained a stiffness granted through commercial art. When living in Central Otago, however, her works begin to develop to a loose landscape style that is familiar in New Zealand art. During classes with John Parker and Don Binney, Bellamy had access to the works of her tutors and their peers, including Colin McCahon and Toss Wooloston. Works like, xxx (197x) and xxx (197x) (dark one and big one?) are stylistically reminiscent of McCahon, Wooloston and Binney’s Otago landscapes, with undulating hills and melancholic colouring. In the landscapes featured in this exhibition, we can see a young artist in dialogue with these influences, feeling out the landscape in her own terms in gestural paint application.

Plein air painting is distinctive element of Bellamy’s painting – landscapes, portraits and scenes from her life and home are painted in person and consequently, Bellamy is able to present a feeling or emotion of that moment. In works done while travelling from 19750-1977, and shortly after, Bellamy shows a confidence and competence in her work across many mediums.

Bellamy’s drive and passion for painting has continued nearly consistently throughout her artistic career. Bellamy has mused that painting and motherhood “overlap all the time so obviously”[iii] Works like cats one (19xx) and John on sofa (19xx) are, like her landscape paintings, painted in person, and while retaining a technical exploration are also snapshots of the life of a mother and wife. Bellamy has ensured that her domestic life and artistic practice are not mutually exclusive. In the mid 1990s, while undergoing chemotherapy treatment, Bellamy continued to allow her life to permeate her art. The self-portrait (19xx) draws colours from the treatment drugs in brown and ochre hues. Bellamy’s face is thin and weary, and her eyes dark. In this work, Bellamy herself and Bellamy the artist are inextricably intertwined.

In the aforementioned text Mitchell quoted Linda Nochlin’s seminal piece ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artist’s?”: “women are finding alternatives to oppressive conditions” and are “exploring woman’s vision.”[iv] Bellamy has expressed of her own art practice: “A painting seems like communicating to myself in a way that’s always been there.”[v] Bellamy explores her own vision and in doing so has overcome what could have been oppressive beginnings. As this exhibition is viewed, it is important to consider the art historical climate and social pressures that Bellamy and other New Zealand woman artists operated within. The concerns that Alison Mitchell expressed are ones that are exemplified and confronted in Pauline Bellamy’s art practice. Her personal development to become and confident artist and her management of external pressures prove her to be exemplary of an artist (woman or otherwise) who confronted all obstacles in order to pursue her art. 

Samantha McKegg, June 2014

[i] Alison Mitchell, “Some Thoughts on Woman’s Art” (1975)
[ii] From the artist’s notebook
[iii] From the artist’s notebook
[iv] Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artist’s?” (1971)
[v] From the artist’s notebook

Max Bellamy is currently showing his work Maroon; Blue (2011) alongside Gary Freemantle, Robyn Belton, Miranda Parkes, Sam Mitchell, Deborah Braton, Heather Straka, Lucy Dolan & Ans Westra. This exhibition collates selected works by previous William Hodges Fellows. Max was one of the 2011 WHF fellows. See the body of work that makes up the outcome of his residency here.

Current William Hodges Fellow Sam Mitchell and Society President Annie Bourque, awarded Pauline's dry-point etching 'Blade Shearers,' top prize at the Southland Art Society Awards in Invercargill last week. To view the winning piece and read more about the prize, click here.

On Sunday we hosted a special afternoon tea at the gallery, with a backdrop of Mother's Day paintings by Pauline Bellamy that span over 20 years. One new work is added to this series every year, as the family come together to sit for a portrait and celebrate the day. Samantha McKegg's suggests that the works "create a cross-section of motherhood in gentle yet emotive figurative pieces." See her review of the work in todays Otago Daily Times here.

Welcome to our brand new website and blog. We've got a lot of exciting stuff around the corner, with a new paint job, Facebook page and exhibition for you to enjoy.
We are excited about the opportunity our new website provides to share artwork that may not have seen the light of day for quite some time. For the next while, we'll celebrate some of our favourites from the archive on our Facebook page, so head on over and follow us here.

In the meantime, here is a favourite of mine
Max