Ocula Report 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale: Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life 15 Feb 2019 : Natalie King for Ocula 'Poems are like sentences that have taken their clothes off.' Marlene Dumas' poetic and sensual refrain accompanies her figurative watercolours on view in Possibilities for a Non-Alienated Life, the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB) in the southern state of Kerala, India (12 December 2018–29 March 2019).Dumas' new series...
Ocula Conversation Ellen Altfest The paintings of Ellen Altfest are ethereal in their detail. Fields of minutiae come together as pulsating images; small brushstrokes of oil paint accumulate over a series of months to single out seemingly innocuous subjects, such as a hand resting atop patterned fabric (The Hand, 2011) or a deep green cactus reaching upwards from beneath a bed of...
Ocula Report Colomboscope 2019: Cross Currents and Dissonance 8 Feb 2019 : Nada Raza for Ocula On the rooftop of the former Rio Hotel complex in Colombo, it was hard to ignore the high-rise buildings, still under construction, blocking all but a sliver of what used to be an open view over Slave Island, once an island on Beira Lake that housed slaves in the 19th century, and now a downtown suburb. The hotel was set alight during the...
Nicola Farquhar (1972, Hamilton) graduated from Elam School of Fine Art’s MFA program in 2009. Recent exhibitions include: Discoveries, Art Basel Hong Kong (2014); Method and Gesture, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne (2013); New Revised Editon, City Gallery, Wellington (2013); and Porous Moonlight, Papakura Art Gallery (2013). In November 2015 Farquhar will participate in Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show at Auckland Art Gallery (curated by Natasha Conland).
Farquhar’s energetic paintings are complex terrains that map the materiality and biology of both the human form and the painted surface. Drawing on compositional conventions of traditional portraiture, patterning, and the abstract language of scientific diagrams (especially those that describe the movement and effects of light), Farquhar’s paintings are part formal studies in space, part sci-fi bodies, part chimerical landscapes.
Nicola FarquharH.H. Frond, 2018 Oil pastel, acrylic, paper clay, custom frame
