Sally Barron - Taking up Space

Exhibition Statement 

VIEW WORKS

We are delighted to welcome the beautiful painted world of Sally Barron into the gallery this year. Sally is a contemporary abstract painter based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She graduated from Whitecliffe with a Master of Fine Arts in 2024 and now paints fulltime from her studio in Ponsonby.

Walking is central to Sally’s art practice. As an inner city artist, her daily walks through her neighbourhood and the surrounding city shape her approach to painting, the walk itself has become a kind of preparatory drawing. Through these daily movements Sally observes the boundaries and overlaps between natural and built up environments – parks, pavements, billboards and facades – prompting a quiet conversation about the supposed neutrality of the landscape. For what appears neutral is rarely free from influence. Sally acknowledges this tension in her paintings; soft gestural lines and blurred colour sit alongside harder marks and bold urban inspired forms. Natural rhythms and constructed spaces meet and overlap across the canvas.

For Sally, both abstract painting and walking are open ended acts. Each unfolds gradually, inviting progression, contemplation, connection, rhythm and exploration. There is a continual balance between chance and intention – shifting pathways and changing views of perspective. Her paintings embrace this sense of impermanence. Alive with colour, overpainting, scraped back surfaces, interwoven lines and layered shapes, they carry a dynamic shifting energy. Process is embraced over resolution, and boundaries remain fluid.

Much of this work was painted outdoors during the summer months. Sally welcomes the movement, sounds and forms of the natural environment into her work. Bird calls and branches shifting in the trees translate into energetic, spontaneous marks across the canvas, while the wind and light moving through leaves, echoes in swirling shapes that pass-through fields of colour. As layers of paint are worked and scaped back, small windows of earlier moments remain visible for us to discover.

New to this series are loosely painted frames around the edges of the canvas, subtle references to the boundaries that shape our natural surroundings: fence lines, pathways and edges of the urban landscape. A reminder that when living in the natural world within the context of the city there always an element of control.

*reference material - Sally Barron Unfinished: Walking and Painting 2024

These paintings celebrate the joy of paint and the life force that surrounds us in the natural world. We warmly invite you to meet Sally and experience her work at the exhibition opening.

Opening Wednesday 22nd April 5-7pm

Exhibition Wednesday 22nd April – Saturday 16th May