Exhibitions
Auckland
Martin Ball Echo: A Brush with History
Orexart, 10 April–1 May MICHAEL DUNN
Ball To many ’s Echo will come as a surprise.
Instead of his meticulously crafted drawings and portraits we find a display of landscapes depicting the famous Pink and White Terraces, once natural wonders that drew tourists from around the world, but which disappeared from view as the result of the eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886.
While the show is a change of direction it does have continuities with his earlier work. The new paintings are sourced in historic photographs of the terraces taken by George D.
Valentine. Ball began this series in 2005 but has evolved it mainly since 2018. In notes for the show, he states that he has used photocopied imagery in the past, as he does here, and that the grey tonal scale of the series is not new to him considering his extensive use of graphite for his many drawings. The subject matter gained a personal association for the artist when he found out that, all those years ago, his great-grandfather Thomas Ball had painted the Pink and White Terraces from the life.
The new paintings give the appearance of having been meditated over, refined and ordered to a high degree. There is an evident calculation in the placement of each tone and trace of colour. Ball has not tried to give the colouristic dimension and drama we associate with Charles Blomfield’s famous and numerous depictions of the Terraces.
Rather he has kept to the near monochromatic palette of Valentine’s Victorian photographs in order to create highly subjective renderings of the vanished terraces in a grey tonal scale. His paintings are like spectral apparitions of the lost beauties of the Pink and White Terraces, nostalgic and somewhat melancholic in mood. In his handling of the paint Ball eschews the gestural and the tactile in favour of a smoother, thinner application of pigment that at times seems almost breathed onto the linen supports. His subtle surfaces bring to mind those found in abstract painters like Rothko where the paint itself is the vehicle of meaning. In fact, Ball has played down the drawn and descriptive dimensions of his subject matter in favour of allusion, suggestion and nuance. Comparatively Valentine’s original photographs are more literal and objective.
There are no sharp lines or edges in the paintings. Even the use of tonal contrast between the terrace formations and the surrounding vegetation and shrubs is reduced to a minimum, or, in some cases such as (2020), eliminated. Compared with Valentine’s photographs, Ball’s paintings are lighter in tone creating an ethereal effect.
