The Deep is a solo presentation of work by Tāmaki Makaurau- based artist Gavin Hipkins. Found images are co-opted into installation, digital video and printed matter. These artworks realise suggestive dreamscapes, forming an industrial sublime in order to evoke yearning and disquietude.
Passing comets, forests, lakes, pyramids, a tithe-barn, an octopus are just some of the phenomena depicted in Hipkins’ exhibition. All were sourced from children’s book illustrations depicting natural as well as industrialised worlds and the colonial reach of the British Empire.
Nocturnes or compositions suggesting the serenity of the night are created through instances of capturing, scanning, enlarging and with the aid of various apparatus including rubber stamps in acts of performative mark-making. Novel processes of image re-production are employed to draw attention to the various ways images and therefore knowledges– particularly settler and Pākehā ones, are disseminated.
Plumbing the depths of visual histories and their attendant narratives Hipkins appropriates and re-presents them within a unique mise-en-scene that enables viewers themselves to occupy the positions of subjects undergoing hypnosis.
Gavin Hipkins
Nocturne (Halley’s Comet)
2022
Archival pigment print
1700 x 1100mm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
Gavin Hipkins
Nocturne (Octopus)
2022
Archival pigment print
1200 x 1035mm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
Gavin Hipkins
Nocturne (Tithe Barn)
2022
Archival pigment print
600 x 900mm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
Gavin Hipkins
Nocturne (Comet)
2021
Archival pigment print
750 x 600mm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
Gavin Hipkins
Postcard Studies (Abel Tasman to Wellington)
2022
Unique set of 54 collages, postcards, painted wood
98 x 145 x 7mm each
Gavin Hipkins
Nocturne (Endurance)
2022
Archival pigment print
650 x 1000mm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
NZD 7,800.00
Gavin Hipkins
Nocturne (Cheops III)
2022
Archival pigment print
585 x 900mm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
Gavin Hipkins
Nocturne (Cheops II)
2022
Archival pigment print
585 x 900mm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
Gavin Hipkins
Nocturne (Cheops I)
2022
Archival pigment print
585 x 900mm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
Gavin Hipkins
Texas Highway
2022
Unique suite of 20 inkjet prints on newsprint
Each 390 x 545mm
Gavin Hipkins
Postcard/Health Stamp (Lake Tekapo)
2022
Collage, postcard, stamp, archival glue
105 x 139mm
Unique
Gavin Hipkins
Postcard/Health Stamp (Mount Aspiring)
2022
Collage, postcard, stamp, archival glue
105 x 139mm
Unique
Gavin Hipkins
Postcard/Health Stamp (Mountain Lake)
2022
Collage, postcard, stamp, archival glue
105 x 139mm
Unique
Gavin Hipkins
The Deep
2022
Digital video
(Colour, stereo
(DCP and digital formats, 2:3 aspect ratio)
Duration 10 minutes
Edition of 3 + 1 AP [excerpt below]
