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new exhibition at the Mangawhai Artists Gallery, Illuminating Layers, celebrates layering as a creative process. Plus, a Christmas market will ‘pop-up’ in front of the Moir Street gallery on Saturday December 6.
Artists, Karen Vernon and Kellie Edwards, embrace layering as a fundamental part of their practice – the deliberate application of medium, the careful rubbing back, the revealed histories beneath. Each work becomes an archaeological site of intention and discovery, where what lies beneath is as crucial as what remains visible.
“These are not simply images crafted through technique, but visual meditations born from the precise placement of material at precisely the right moment – a dance between control and surrender that echoes our own navigation through life,” Vernon says.
“The artworks function as prompts for contemplation, each layer offering new questions to consider, new narratives to uncover. What appears as surface belies the complexity beneath, inviting viewers to engage not just with what they see, but with what they sense, intuit, and discover through sustained looking.”
“This exhibition acknowledges that growth – both artistic and personal – is never linear,” says Kellie Edwards. “It occurs through accumulation and loss, through building up and breaking down. We speak to the viewer’s own layered experience, recognising that we too are constantly building and peeling back our understanding, our growth, our insight into the world around us.”
Illuminating Layers at the Mangawhai Artists Gallery 45 Moir Street Mangawhai, is open daily from 10.30am to 3.30pm (from 9am on Saturdays), until December 11.
