2022 | VENICE
BIENNALE SPACES
10 MINUTE WINDOWS
2019 | NEW YORK
VAN RENSBURG GALLERIES
INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES
"Invisible boundaries, personal or geographical challenge us to make decisions based on the limitations we create." And so unfolds the idea at the heart of the new series by Green.
Creating mystical landscapes through paint and mixed media, replete with surreal symbolism, these landscapes present conundrums or choices that we must the confront and rationalise. Employing children in her work, Green seeks to remind us of a younger time when perhaps we didn't see the invisible boundaries that seem so palpable to us as adults. Children - full of curiosity and imagination, and unconditioned by expectation or custom0 so often seek to innocently push through or transgress those boundaries that, as we get older seem to become more insurmountable. There is always a choice not to explore, not to leap, not to push forward. But then the mystical beauty of life, as conveyed in the rich and symbolic textures on the canvas, will not reveal themselves to us, and we will not revel in these beautiful contexts which Green creates so skilfully and whimsically.
The exhibition 10 - Minute Window by New Zealand artist Veronica Green is composed of 5 artworks that are to be admired through different lights and settings. Lighting, whether bright or absent, is indeed the focus of the show, as it is complementary to the viewing of the paintings that, through alternating moments of light and shadow, reveal their true ambivalent nature. Through a specific fluorescent pigment that glows in the dark, the five pieces have been devised to be visible in the shade. Opening and closing windows become then a performative act that enables Green's audience to fully appreciate her work while also offering a subtle nod to the culture of the city where the show takes place: Venice. Sure enough, a distinguished feature of the Venetian cityscape are her windows, which open up onto the water, the calli or the palazzos, offering a glimpse of the peculiar architectures they call home.
EXHIBITIONS
A shortlist of some of the key exhibitions
2018 | NEW YORK | HONG KONG
VAN RENSBURG GALLERIES
Green presents her latest exhibition from Hong Kong to New Yorks World of McIntosh (WoM) building. A mastery of light illuminates each nostalgic depiction, as viewers we are confronted with two magical worlds. Paintings that by light provide us with the opportunity to explore the energy of colour and a moment to reflect our inner child. Click...the light switched off..In darkness we are silenced by the chandelier of stars that gently pierce through the canvas and engulf us in a hushed state of contemplation.
2018 | NEW YORK, USA
VAN RENSBURG GALLERIES
WHIMSICAL POCKETS
Unbeknownst if our pockets are empty or full from time to time we reach in and retrieve little treasures. This fanciful experience of mystery, discovery, loss and memory stimulates emotion. "Whimsical Pockets," allows us as viewers to dip into the seams of our hidden selves and pull out and recover what we cannot disregard, challenged in seeking an understanding for the placement of lost objects and memories within new realities.
MY WINDOW, YOUR VIEW
2017 | HONG KONG, CHINA
VAN RENSBURG GALLERIES
BEYOND THE BRICK WALL
Imagine what else could be?
Beyond the Brick wall is an exploration of the intertwining themes of imagination, dreams and determination. It's about breaking through constraints and meeting life's challenges with optimism. Our inner child doesn't see constraints the way we often do, instead seeing all the colour, nuance and beauty of possibilities. The canvas is a porthole, a window through today's walls into a world of possibilities
2016 | SHANGHAI | CHINA
COSPACE
GOLDEN WORLDS
The in Golden Worlds present something of a turning point; approximately half sit firmly in her histoRIC practice- brightly coloured narratives that strongly feature figures of children, fairytale characters, caught either in acts of defiance or acts of contrition. The other half- what could be described as the golden section- take her typically dreamlike landscapes and focus on the abstract quality of these floating worlds. While they feature her familiar cast of symbolic characters, their appearances is markedly reduced, focusing on the weight of the landscape itself.
These worlds share some commonalities with traditional Chinese landscape painting, the terraces and flora bustle and float, each in their own perspective without a vanishing point to indicate space and distance, each oat equally important to the eye, The absence of horizon is reinforced by the painterly drips at the margins, moving upwards, sideways, as equally as downwards. One is free to project through the canvas, as if flying towards the centre.
The effect is akin to viewing worlds through a lens, or crystal ball, which inflamed further when one turns out the lights. Behind each world is yet another, a night time world of surprises, full of stars.
2015 | WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND
30 UPSTAIRS GALLERY
THE LIGHT OF MY SHADOW
Veronica Green (1984) Wellington, New Zealand combines a myriad of details symbolic themes, and historical and personal iconography synthesised in one image, as a richly dense network of references. In this exhibition Green invites the viewers to explore the relationship that they have with their own shadow and question its history, the topic of the double, animism and symbology.
To analyse the shadow is tantamount to a sui generis psychoanalysis, Green challenges her dark side of undesired traits, escaping, separating, facing and acknowledging that the prism of light that each person contains is very much a form of accepting their own identity.
Phosphorescent paint is used to draw attention to both real and fictitious elements of the works as the canvas is transformed by the presence or lack of light. Her works communicate on various levels of interpretation and formal realisation; in a daylight nature emerges in a poignant yet deceptive landscape, but n darkness a different scene of dreamy allure develops. Light becomes the key element to the work as it encompasses the space around it to engage the viewer in a continuous state of flux between immersion and emersion.
2015 | VENICE | ITALY
VENICE IN A BOTTLE GALLERY
LIGHT(LAND)SCAPE
A collateral event in association with the project Within Light//Inside Glass. An intersection between art and science transporting the viewer into a fantastical world, and luminescent pate de verre objects creating glowing cityscapes reveal the delicacy of the metropolis.
With out doubt it is the Venetians that pioneered the genre of landscape painting and the exploration of light as a powerful atmospheric element. Light inspires artists to create landscapes that prevail over the human figure, where the earth and disorder dictate the skyline, and the natural environment dominates over rationality and prospective. Through light, symbolic themes, mystic narratives and historical clues are both revealed and concealed within the canvas as they shift between clarity and obscurity. Through light nature is discovered. Veronica Green, a young artist originally from New Zealand now located in Venice uses this concept of light to create works with similar pictorial ideals of great masters such as Giorgione, Bellini, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, and Veronese. Veronica uses intense vibrant colours with touches of fluorescent paint to convey a vision that is rich in cultural references from her own origins. Her works communicates on various levels of interpretation and formal realisation; in daylight nature emerges in a poignant yet deceptive landscape, but in darkness a different scene of dreamy allure develops.
2013 | LUGANO, SWITZERLAND
EGO GALLERY
L'ERA DELLE STELLE
If disentangling from the different cultures that make up our society is a very complex process in itself, the contemporary globalized world further enriches this cultural background of rooted traditions. In particular, with the development of the new media (television, cinema and the Internet), a global cultural revolution occurred during the last sixty years, where various populations have become increasingly closer and mixed, and where a common popular culture has emerged. In her works, Veronica Green succeeds in synthetizing this lively cocktail of references spectacularly, integrating them into her personal life. Her works are thus developed on different levels both as regards the interpretation of her work and its formal development.
By day, natural areas represented cast us into haunting and deceptive landscapes, taking us to a magical and seductive world. The colours appear, disappear, slide, and the ways forward are varied; but instead of taking us to our destination, they make us bounce on a new unstable and fluctuating ground. The characters of fairy tales or cartoons that inhabit her paintings seem to be the only ones who know the geography and lush maze of these places. Each figurative element, however, has a very precise allegorical function. It may in fact represent a concept or situation: freedom, strength, motherhood, guilt, glamor, travel, risk, etc. These symbols therefore also allow viewers to find their own way. And when night falls, a starry sky emerges from every canvas, introducing another painting that will light the way in times of darkness. So using a symbolic language similar to what we find in the world of fairy tales, the artist speaks of values and culture. Playing with collective imagination, familiar and comfortable, she takes us to places where we have all been to, but that, as adults, we visit no more.
AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES
2008 | ARTIST IN RESIDENCE, SPIAZZI GALLERY, VENICE ITALY
2015 |. ARTIST IN RESIDENCE, 30 UPSTAIRS GALLERY, WELLINGTON NEW ZEALAND
2020 | ARTIST IN RESIDENCE, CHATEAU D'ORQUEVAUX, FRANCE ( DENIS DIDERTOT { A-I-R} GRANT