Lessons in Isolation

PG gallery192, Christchurch, NZ

23 March – 10 April 2021

These recent canvases are an inversion of that desert painter of 2010. In an alpine environment reminiscent of Aotearoa, with last summer’s stained ice and snow in evidence, Macleod’s protagonist now finds himself confronted by memories of the burning continent of his ‘other life’. The campfire that warms him is one manifestation of the flammable Australian flora.

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Gregory O'Brien

Figure in a dissolving landscape

King Street Gallery on William, Sydney

1 – 26 September 2020

Euan and well known New Zealand photographer Craig Potton spent a few nights together near the top of the Tasman Glacier early this year. This is an extract from what is hoped will be a book and joint exhibition of their work based on the Southern Alps of New Zealand.

Swing/Bridge

Watters Gallery, Sydney

5 – 30 September 2017

Earlier this year New Zealand achieved a legal first when, after much consultation with Maori groups, ‘legal
personhood’ was accorded to the Whanganui River, 200km north of Wellington. The waterway now has the right to be represented in a court of law. Therein lies a proof that, in fundamental ways, we can change the terms upon which we engage with the environment. Such an acknowledgement that humanity is umbilically linked not only to water, but also to soil and air and a broader concept of nature, has been at the heart of Euan Macleod’s painterly project for the over three decades now.

A backward glance

Bowen Galleries,Wellington, NZ

3 – 29 April 2017

A tour of Fiordland in 2015 further enhanced his evolving vision of southern New Zealand. For Macleod, as for any artist worth their salt, contemplating these landscapes becomes, inadvertently, a process of looking backwards into history—to the Fiordland visited by Captain Cook in the late 18th century, to Shotover River during its gold-mining heyday, and also to the settlements and seasonal routes of Ngai Tahu over many centuries.

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Gregory O'Brien

High and low

Nockart Gallery, Hong Kong

20 March – 19 May 2017

The exhibition comprises of 10 paintings on canvas and a selection from a suite of 41 works on paper created after a trip to China’s spectacular Yellow Mountain (Huangshan) in 2016.