Maps, Music & Microbiology Conversations with Philippa Blair
GALLERY
I was in Auckland on a warm weekend in March to see Philippa Blair’s exhibition Counter-flow at Orexart, and to interview the artist. For more than a decade, Philippa Blair was a familiar name in the New Zealand art world, from the break-out Mellow Yellow show at New Vision Gallery in 1975, to the paint-splattered loose canvases of the 1980s, inventively turned into mats, cloaks and tents inspired by Native American art. Then she moved to California. The paintings changed, the career flourished, but back here we saw less. The Orexart exhibition, however, covers work of the last four years, since she returned to Auckland to live. I met Philippa at the gallery, in Arch Hill, on the Saturday afternoon; the paintings beamed with light and colour (especially the show’s 2019 title work, Counter-flow, illuminated by the sun from a skylight above), and sculptures of detritus morphed into lively, amiable characters. Details such as cracks, drips, swipes and bleeding tape lines drew me in and opened up fascinating, intricate spaces.
After I had soaked it all up, we drove out along the motorway to Philippa’s studio in Henderson. The following day, we talked some more, back in Arch Hill, at the old villa she retained all the while she lived in the States, now slumping a little disconcertingly on the steep hill that points down to the motorway below. Our mobile, sprawling conversations at these different locations seemed in tune with the prevalent themes of travel and map-making in Philippa’s art.
STUDIO
Philippa Blair: I love working in this industrial area.
On weekdays, there are trucks coming and going, but everyone is very respectful and helpful, and I get a lot of the offcuts. I make sculptures out of the off-cuts from the big bins outside. And I sit at that table and make gouaches. They’re warm-ups; they don’t end up as paintings. At art school, we had to do drawings first, then make a painting from them. For me, it was always a good way to make a dead painting. Because I’d already done it, you know? I try to start each painting fresh,
