Tira Walsh is one of the most exciting painters to emerge from Auckland's art schools in recent years. Working with the affective detritus of cinema, popular music and everyday life, Walsh courts experiential incoherence as one of her primary materials. Drawing on the complex and clashing physical sensations of being in the world, Walsh transmutes the excesses of physical sensation into a punch and blur language that treats each canvas as a 'repository of negotiation'. Taking cues from coloured light spills and street stains, hyper speed and diegetic sound, the manipulations of after-effects and the energetic detritus of the city, she reorders a collage of physical intensities into freefall painterly landscapes of jump cuts and phase shifts. Walsh has begun to accrue a notable exhibition history since graduating with a Master of Creative Practice from Unitec in 2018. Recent group exhibitions include Next, Sydney Contemporary (2019), Sydney, Hustle, Two Rooms Gallery, Auckland (2019), Urbanize, Te Po Gallery (2018); Never An Answer, 12 Abstract Painters, The Vivian, Matakana, curated by Linda Tyler and Lucinda Bennett (2018); Drawcard, State Gallery, Mt Eden, Auckland (2018); My Hands are Visibly Soiled, Snowwhite Gallery, Unitec, Auckland (2018); Roundhouse, TSB Bank Wallace Arts Centre, Auckland (2017-2018); Glaister Ennor Art Award Exhibition, Sanderson Contemporary, Auckland (2017). In 2019 Walsh was awarded the Kaipara Wallace Arts Trust Award, receiving a three-month residency at Altes Spital in Solothurn, Switzerland. In 2021 she has been awarded the Eden Arts, Karekare House residency.
