Previous Exhibitions
For the month of June 2017, ZIMMERMAN presents The Otherness of Ourselves: paintings by Rebecca Wallis. This is the artist's third solo exhibition at ZIMMERMAN.
Rebecca Wallis: The Otherness of Ourselves
Rebecca Wallis seeks to make associations between the corporeal (the body) and the painterly (paint and the painting).
Paint seeps, leaps and spills across the artist’s canvases, spawning forms at once fleshly, fluid and alive.
The artist, noted for her mastery in working with gouache, has achieved unexpectedly soft and seductive painterly effects in this latest body of work, begun in 2015 and completed this year.
The result is a series of paintings that are simultaneously fascinating and disconcerting, evoking in the viewer a “push and pull” response of both curiosity and unease.
Wallis’ paintings also reference “the abject, through ideas of the Other, seen as displacement (that which is out of place)."
"The Otherness in these works is something that at one time belongs to us, is part of us and our autonomy. When it escapes, or separates itself away, it becomes something Other; foreign alien, unfamiliar, and threatening because of this.”
The paintings give physical form to internal realms, with emotion and instinct played against logic and the external world.
Brief artist bio
Born in the UK in 1964, Rebecca Wallis has lived and practised between London and Auckland since completing her first Fine Arts qualifications in 1988. In 1995, Wallis attained a Masters in Visual Arts from Goldsmiths College of Art in London.
A former winner of the Walker & Hall Art Award (2008), Wallis’ work has also been selected for a number of other significant national art awards, including the Painting and Printmaking Art Awards (2012 and 2009) and the National Contemporary Art Awards (2011).
In 2017, Wallis’ work was a finalist in the Aesthetica Art Prize (UK).
Wallis is also a regular finalist in the prestigious Wallace Art Awards (2015, 2014, 2009 and 2008).
In 2015, Wallis enjoyed a sell-out show at Art Taipei (Taiwan). As a result, she was invited to exhibit at Asia Contemporary 2016 (Hong Kong).
Wallis’ paintings are held in a number of important national art collections, including the James Wallace Arts Trust and the Walker & Hall collection. Local institutions holding art works by Wallis include Te Manawa (Museum of Art, Science & History) and Massey University.
