FIGHTINGFIT

A solo exhibition by Gareth Brighton, opens 20th October.

Gareth Brighton is an artist from Christchurch. Graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts from The University of Canterbury (2016). He works in paint, primarily using found materials.

Brighton creates painted objects with the intention of making the viewer slow down to examine the materials and visual structure of pictorial communication. His work marries references to written and pictorial language; drawn and painterly picture making. His work examines artistic communication in a detritus laden, late capitalist world. Using recycled clothing as the surface for his paintings and street side flotsam, such as discarded furniture as the grist for his sculptural mill.

The resulting work often seems abstract: while still holding reference to things such as calligraphy or icon painting. These references are given a different accent through spray paint, pastels and oil sticks. Brighton’s casual line work is offset by dense patches of colours allowing vague forms to appear.

Text by Bice Grace Lapin on the occasion of Gareth Brighton’s FIGHTINGFIT.

Yes, we’ve survived and are living life. This is how I face the world, some days Stretched Thin, some days Jaded. I write ‘living life’ because Gareth draws with paint, stick figures into being. This is not casual mark making, there is manipulated intention. Each figure is animatedly on the move, we have to catch their voice before they move off frame. They’re us, they’re Gareth, they’re our friends. I want to take them home. 

This series of works harken back to Gareth’s early art focus on printing making. They are a row of similar size paintings (around 290 x220mm), plus another here and another there, and three with figures standing over hand gestures - the political and the social. How does the world see me? My public face looking outward, my private face looking inward. The figures are within and without, separate, and of, the strong colours of their moment. They are tactile, they are alive. 

Gareth’s work has been noted for aspects of icon painting and calligraphy - and in the past he has enjoyed calligraphy work. In the FIGHTINGFIT paintings there’s no deep space to look into, but these paintings are more than illusion-free pictograms. There are layers of resounding history for us to visually unwrap from the abundance of paint on paint, on fabric, on board. Each figure is framed but not imprisoned - the paint not stretching to the edge, leaving to be seen the fabric which are past pieces of clothing, life having lived and now reborn. These iconographic figures conjure up symbols - McCahon’s tau grown a neck and head, or calligraphy marks with human form. For me the linkages to Aotearoa history goes deeper, down to the birdman figure of early Māori rock art. These works clasp us in our present moment, but ask that we ponder the unbroken continuity of time.

These paintings are both image and floating object. Our stick figure friends bounce off the wall to join the goings on, the bricolage, on the floor. My art historian brain plays with Paul Klee and Robert Rauschenberg in a new century kiwi blender. But Gareth’s FIGHTINGFIT exhibition makes a unique imprint. Having experienced the chaos of the Christchurch earthquake he has known material permanence suddenly gone, and then surviving and rebuilding with street leftovers. And Covid came, not yet gone, we saw breaks in community, identities questioned, who am I today? On the floor space and leaning on walls are sculptures of found materials, given a new life with shape, form and connection - including the space they occupy. We are unable to resist taking time to question these sculptures, to make our own narratives around them from serious to whimsical. Materialism laid bare, humanity laid bare, it may be uncomfortable. But hey, it’s not over yet. The world is textual, and to be experienced with exuberance.

You are one, you are many. We are FIGHTINGFIT.