GRAHAM FLETCHER

Graham Fletcher's first solo exhibition at Gow Langsford Gallery, Phantom Cube, continues to explore themes of cultural appropriation created by the European tradition of housing collections of Oceanic and African Tribal art in domestic settings. Totems, 'primitive' structures and tribal objects are collaged into modern interior and exterior-scapes generating illogical conjunctions that bring into light aspects of borderless states and the de-familiarisation of cultures through juxtaposition. Although these new works can be viewed through the lens of post colonialism and its use of traditional ethnographic forms, they also share common ground with the works of Dada and Surrealist artists in their references to the collision of cultures through disparate objects. It is through this blending of cultural and Modernist elements that these works talk about aspects of authenticity, cultural interaction and the assimilation of indigenous peoples within the Western landscape,

Graham Fletcher has been a practicing artist since 1997 and has exhibited extensively both in New Zealand and abroad, He has works in significant private and public collections and has also received numerous awards and grants including the Wallace Arts Trust Development Award (2010).

Image: Graham Fletcher, Untitled, 2014, 2100 x 1800mm, oil on canvas