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25 March-1 May 2014

Harry Wong b 1943

New Zealand Chinese artist Wong Sing Tai, aka Harry Wong, is a painter, printmaker, and film-maker.

After he won the first Benson and Hedges Art Award in 1968, Colin McCahon described one of his works as New Zealand’s “first Pop Painting”. Yet Wong now employs his signature graphic, hard-edged style now for solely abstract concerns.

Wong is on a clear mission to resolve some of those painterly concerns he had explored in the late 1970’s.

His recent exhibition Interception, with its assured exploration of relationships of colour, shape and the subtle perceptual reverberations that result, tap into his long standing interest in the contemplative potential inherent in these formal elements.

“From a painting perspective, the content of colour, balance, concrete form and subtlety are concepts that excite me.”

Certainly one of the earliest in New Zealand to paint onto perspex, Wong returns to this 20th century support which signals his Pop heritage and his interest in its transparency and effect on colour.

Wong, the older brother of artist Brent Wong, was one of 10 artists featured in the exhibition section of the Auckland City Art Gallery Ten Big Paintings Project which also featured work by Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon, Don Driver, and Milan Mrkusich.

His vivid geometric abstraction nods appreciatively to such Modernist Abstractionists as, Klee, Malevich and Charchoune. Wong’s paintings and screen-prints are represented in public collections including Te Papa, Auckland City Art Gallery, the University of Auckland Collection and the Hocken.

1.

Pacific Harbour, 1978

Acrylic on Perspex

2130 x 1240 mm

2.

Yellow Yantra, 1970

Acrylic on Perspex

1500 x 1200 mm

YELLOW YANTRA was one of my earliest Buddhist paintings executed in 1970. it was exhibited both at the Peter McLeavey Gallery and the Barry Lett Galleries. 44 years ago . Its alternative name is JETSUN . The YANTRA series consisted of 2 groups. KEYS and VEHICLES , These paintings were suggestive of spiritual states with basic colour symbolism representing the heart , love, red. Yellow representing Prajna , wisdom, enlightenment, joy. Green, earth and nature . Blue heaven , purity as influenced by heaven as opposed by the influence of earth. Some colours resting others being in a state of flux or transformation. All influencing each other and tempered by their respective characteristics.

3.

Carnival, 2013

Acrylic on Perspex

1630 x 2000 mm

4.

Flightplan #4,1981

Acrylic on Perspex

1000 x 1000 mm

FLIGHTPLAN N0.4 . 1981

This painting was part of a series executed in the early 1980’s Based on a silhouette of a Blenheim Bomber drawn in the studio of Mervyn Williams in Helensville during the printing of BADLANDS for Peter Webb. Easily recognised by the Kaipara river in background.

5.

B2, 2014

Acrylic on Perspex

1200 x 1200 mm

B2 2014

The third image and new work B2 is a new aeroplane image. The acme of current military technology so awesome in its potential. An extension of the FLIGHTPLAN SERIES of the early 1970’s from 30 years ago.

6.

Strata #3 2011

Acrylic on Perspex

1200 x 1200 mm

7.

Piha, 2012

Acrylic on Perspex

1200 x 1200 mm

8.

Muriwai, 2012

Acrylic on Perspex

2000 x 1500 mm

9.

Ninety Mile Beach, 2012

Acrylic on Perspex

2400 x 1200 mm

Brent Wong b 1945

The striking and seemingly inexplicable scenes of Brent Wong startled and enthralled a Wellington public in his first solo show of 1969. His exquisitely rendered visions soon took their hold nation-wide.

Against clear blue Wellington skies, curious formations of masonry loom over isolated hills and coast-lines. The dilapidated colonial dwellings which often feature are as emblematic as the disquieting monoliths above and the cloud formations beyond; they are carriers of emotional and psychic states. For the New Zealand public, these incredible combinations cast a familiar island country into a strange and new realisation.

Wong was once asked if the monolith form was like ‘a Chinese puzzle’. Today this analogy or asso-ciation is still apt for the artist. The images as a whole signalled a search for self-identity the outcome however, remains to be seen.

The beginnings of his ‘surreal’ paintings in the late 1960s were interior ‘mindscapes’ characterised by strange happenings on nonsensical architectural stages. It is in these formative paintings that key metaphors appear, such as in Cloud Machine, 1968, where a whimsical device suggestive of a coffee machine produces an emphatic puffy cloud. The cloud at this stage was fluid in meaning for the artist. Meditative states, actual or yearned for, however, are suggested throughout Wong’s oeuvre through the metaphor of the cloud or luminosity as seen in his later, ‘Transformation’ paintings. These glowing, extraordinary images began in the late 1970s and were a preoccupation for over thirty years. While some evolved from the impact of sensorial phenomena; such as light effects on water or sky, others are more direct evocations of transcendental experience. Wong says;During the 80’s, church music, particularly that of J.S. Bach – which I listened to while painting – and the practice of meditation, resulted in heightened states of awareness and inner calm. From this time came what I call the ‘light and energy’ works.

Born in 1945, Wong was brought up and schooled in Wellington. He studied at the Wellington Poly-technic College, however left after a year, disillusioned with the College’s move away from fine arts training. From the early 1960s onwards he drew on a number of inspirations. Among them were his local natural and architectural environment, magazine reproductions, and international artists such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky with their emphases on the spiritual and intuitive, the mesmerising skies of English Romantic Joseph Mallord William Turner and the emotionally loaded and painstaking paintings of American painter Andrew Wyeth.

Brent Wong is represented widely in public collections:

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, The Dowse Art Museum and the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa, Waikato Art Gallery and Museum, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Rotorua Museum, Tauranga Art Gallery, Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery, Te Manawa Museum of Art, Science and History, Sargeant Gallery, and Anderson Park Gallery.

Works on loan: Victoria University of Wellington and Wairarapa Museum of Art and History.

10.

Composition in green/grey/brown 1963

Watercolour

280 x 210 mm

11.

Field with Hidden Stone, 1965

Watercolour

265 x 319 mm

12.

Landscape, 1966

Watercolour

290 x 440 mm

13.

Massed Clouds and Field, 2003

Oil on Board

350 x 450 mm

14.

Dark Hill - Red Clouds 1998

Acrylic on Board

351 x 490 mm

15.

Harmonium/Massing Clouds, 1984

Acrylic on Board

700 mm x 790 mm

16.

Cloud / Coast 1998

Acrylic on Board

380 x 570 mm

17.

Primordiate, 1976

Acrylic on Hardwood

458 x 645 mm

18.

Untitled, (from the Meditation series 2002)

Oil on Board

900 x 1040 mm

HARRY // BRENT WONG25th March - 1st May 2014

1. Harry Wong Pacific Harbour, 1978 acrylic on perspex POA

2. Harry Wong Yellow Yantra, 1970 acrylic on perspex NFS

3. Harry Wong Carnival, 2013 acrylic on perspex $24,000

4. Harry Wong Flightplan #4, 1981 acrylic on perspex NFS

5. Harry Wong B2, 2014 pigmented ink print on perspex, ed.1/7 $3,850

6. Harry Wong Strata #3, 2011 acrylic on perspex $15,000

7. Harry Wong Piha, 2012 acrylic on perspex $15,000

8. Harry Wong Muriwai, 2012 acrylic on perspex $26,000

9. Harry Wong Ninety mile beach, 2012 acrylic on perspex $28,000

10. Brent Wong Composition in green/grey/brown, 1963 watercolour on paper $5,850

11. Brent Wong Field with hidden stone, 1965 watercolour on paper $7,500

12. Brent Wong Landscape, 1966 watercolour on paper $8,250

13. Brent Wong Massed clouds+ field, 2003 oil on board $18,500

14. Brent Wong Dark Hill - Red clouds, 1998 acrylic on board $24,000

15. Brent Wong Harmonium/massing clouds, 1984 acrylic on board POA

16. Brent Wong Cloud / Coast, 1998 acrylic on board $24,000

17. Brent Wong Primordiate, 1976 acrylic on hardwood POA

18. Brent Wong Untitled, (from the meditation series), 2002 oil on board POA

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