Ian Chapman - Solo exhibition at Aratoi
Award-winning painter Ian Chapman presents ‘A Song for the Uncoordinated’, a solo exhibition of new paintings, on aluminium, that have a quirky sense of humour.
Aratoi welcomes everyone to the opening night, Friday 2 August, 5.30pm, and to the public talk on Saturday 3 August, at 11am.
“I see each painting as its own narrative, a story caught mid-sentence,” says Ian Chapman. “The mix of unlikely things in an unlikely landscape could be considered clumsy and uncoordinated but, like us all, they strangely belong together. They become our own song.”
“I paint on aluminium because the ultra-smooth surface is easier to work on when you are dealing with a lot of detail.”
Born in Brighton, England, Ian Chapman has been a practicing artist since the 1990s, training in Visual Art at the Polytechnic in Masterton, and in Creative Writing at Whitireia.
A finalist in the 1994 Wallace Art Awards – “I didn’t know how big a deal this was at the time,” he says – Ian Chapman won the 1995 Burridge and Co Art Awards and the 2007 Yellow Pages Art Awards, and has exhibited across New Zealand: in Auckland (Pah Homestead), Dunedin (Artist Room), Masterton (Aratoi, King Street Artworks, Little Jewels, Wairarapa Art Review), Waipawa (Artmosphere) and Wellington (Wearable Art Awards). His art is held in collections in Aotearoa, Australia, Germany, Portugal, UK and USA.
Chapman is a community-minded artist. He has been involved with King Street Artworks since its inception in 1997, first as a tutor and for the past eight years as Coordinator. A founding member of ConArt Gallery and Studios, he is also an organiser of the annual Block Party in the Masterton CBD.
His inspirations? “I am influenced by movies, steampunk, retro toys, and the cartoons of Gary Larson.”
The exhibition A Song for the Uncoordinated continues until 22 September. The museum is open daily, 10am – 4pm, free admission.