Jack Trolove_Mangrove

I love the word Liminal. It comes from a Latin word meaning ‘threshold’. Bjørn Thomassen describes it beautifully: Liminality “opens the door to a world of contingency where events and meanings — indeed ‘reality itself’ — can be moulded and carried in different directions”.

Uncovering names for the silty, brackish paintings I’ve made, I’m surprised to realise this show has grown from the mangroves where I live. More muted colours have found their way up to the paintings’ surface through the rich Kaipara mud. These new scrambling marks are pneumatophores: ‘specialised root-like structures that stick up out of the soil like straws for breathing’. The paintings are made of marks looking for oxygen.

(Click HERE for the full essay).

Jack has been a practicing artist for over twenty years, showing in spaces across Aotearoa, Australia and Europe. He has an MFA from Massey University and is currently pursuing his doctorate at Elam School of Fine Arts. He has been awarded an international artist residency by the Scottish Arts Council and has undertaken other residencies in France and Spain. He’s been an award winner and finalist in the Wallace Art Awards on multiple occasions. His last solo show ‘Tenderise’ was the subject of a feature review in Art New Zealand. Reviewer Michael Dunn wrote, “Tenderise proves to be, on reflection, a show of considerable depth and relevance. In it Trolove has evolved as a painter of substance as well as a virtuoso manipulator of paint.” Jack’s work can be found in public and private collections both here and overseas.