VIEW WORKS

Linda Gair’s current art practice is constantly evolving around the use and reuse of architectural remnants, wooden substrates, and occasionally wooden objects, that have had a quite different previous use.

Gair admits to having become a ‘Material Culture’ genre painter.

This means that objects are not just objects, but ‘carriers’ of meaning - asking the questions – what are your stories?

• What history is embedded in it?

• Who made it?

• What life has it lived?

• What culture or community has it come from?

• Does it trigger any stories in the present?

She thoroughly enjoys this process of repurposing and reinvention. These physical things always carry the histories of communities, beliefs, migrations, economies, rituals, identities and simple daily living. Visualising the new outcome for these pieces has her thoroughly enjoying researching for those answers, then by translating them through paint, a new visual narrative.

Gair says that often this just happens by ‘CHANCE’ - which she sees as the gap between intention and outcome, and which always involves a considerable amount of problem-solving.

This constant act of discovery Gair finds exciting, and as she says, “it’s really the anticipation of my being part of the object’s transition and then being a part of its new perception and reception.”

Linda majored in Photography in 1977, from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland. To this day, she carries a fascination with how ‘light’ lands on all surfaces, and how it bounces around and reflects in a myriad ways. This preoccupation is clear to see in her paintings

Selected Exhibitions:

NARRATIVES and FRAGMENTS - Railway Street Gallery, Newmarket, Solo Exhibition March/April 2026 - VIEW WORKS

ALTERED PERSPECTIVES - Railway Street Gallery, Newmarket, Solo Exhibition August 2024

TO CIRCUMVENT & REVEAL - Railway Street Gallery, Newmarket, Joint Exhibition with Angus de Long  December 2024 

STUDIO to WALL - 250 Gallery, Ponsonby - Railway Street Gallery Group Show, September 2023

HOMAGE II Railway Street Gallery, Newmarket, Solo Exhibition, October 2022

HOMAGE I -  Railway Street Gallery, Newmarket, Solo Exhibition, April/May 2021

CONFLICT of INTEREST - The Depot Artspace, Devonport, Solo Exhibition, December 2021

INSUFFRAGABLE - The Depot Artspace, Devonport, Group Show, November 2018

Significant past group shows:

@ The Depot Artspace / Devonport

• Birds of a Feather

• Dressed to Kill

• Stack the Deck

@ North Art / Northcote

• Wardrobe – solo exhibition

@ Lake House Gallery / Takapuna

• Room with a View - solo exhibition