Featherston-based artist Jake Walker has described his work as 'Folk Modernism' and his process as 'wrestling paintings into the realms of sculpture' - and a new work just purchased for the Aratoi collection is a perfect example of both.
His oil painting with its distinctive handmade earthenware frame is inspired by the late Ian Athfield's architecture, a pervading influence on the artist who stayed at Athfield's Wellington home as a six year old.
The painting was part of a suite he showed at the Contemporary Sydney art fair in September.
Jake's father is architect Roger Walker, and the Athfields were family friends. Roger Walker, whose buildings include Masterton's Centrepoint, Thorndon Primary School and Ropata Village, Lower Hutt, quickly rose to prominence after establishing his practice in the early 1970s. Jake remembers barrowing cement at both men's building sites.
Jake attended Otago School of Fine Arts in 1991 and has forged his art career in Sydney and Melbourne over the past decade. But it's only recently that he's become aware of just how much of his father's work and influences have been imprinted on his own psyche. It took a a friend showing him a book on NZ architecture in a Melbourne op shop to join the dots.
Jake has since translated the quirky protrusions, apertures and outcrops of Athfield's architecture into many paintings and ceramic forms, as well as relief works that dance between the two.
'The ceramic frames are at some level a manifestation of my frustrations with paint; the process of making something from clay has a logic that is in many ways foreordained.'
'Oil paint is such a wily and unknowable substance in many respects, especially when you start to manipulate it and break rules. It's about working out which are the rules you want to break, what will reveal something new in the finished work.'
Jake says he chose Featherston as a base because he was able to buy a house and store his work there, while still being close to Wellington.
He was born in Wadestown in 1971, and attended Otago School of Fine Arts in 1991. He has had solo projects and group shows in Australia, New Zealand , Basel and London.
A Wall of Words: Marie E. Potter, until 4 Dec; VISION / MEMORY: Marie E. Potter installation, until 4 Dec; Kura Gallery at Aratoi: Mauri Ora - The essence of all things, until 4 Dec. One Postcard a Day: Steffen Kreft until 13 Dec; Robin White with Ruha Fifita: Ko e Hala Hangatonu: The Straight Path, until 5 January.
Caption: Clockwise from left: 'Untitled' by Jake Walker; 'Rainbow Falls'; the artist (photo: Kevin Stent); installation view from Jake Walker: The Town Belt at City Gallery Wellington last year (photo: Hamish McLaren).