Fifteen years after his first survey exhibition at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, then the Fisher Gallery, this exhibition profiles selected works from Auckland artist Richard Killeen’s recent digital collages, alongside two significant early paintings. Something old something new builds on the artists oeuvre as a prolific gatherer and manipulator of signs and images.
Killeen’s extensive body of work incorporating computer graphics culminates here in prints which explore a pseudo-futuristic world. Joe Build is a personage constructed from children’s toy blocks and city buildings complete with pāua shell eyes. The objects in the work are sculpted by a uniform light, yet all illusions of shadows are superseded by an attraction to surface, and playful twists on pictorial conventions. The frame of Joe Build is integrated into the composition of the print and is ornamented with icons of Egyptian dogs rendered in Killeen’s signature style. Op Shop similarly presents a floating battleship recalling surrealist dream worlds. Curtains ripple above like biomorphic blobs, suspending the rules of perspective to sew a rich tapestry of art historical echoes.