26 May - 20 June 2012Come Back

Anita DeSoto

Milford Galleries Dunedin18 Dowling Street (03) 477 7727 info@milfordhouse.co.nz

www.milfordgalleries.co.nz

1. Nearly Home (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1373 x 915 x 35 mm

2. Abor Spiritus (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1370 x 913 x 35 mm

3. Man of the Upside Down World (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1373 x 915 x 35 mm

4. Homesick (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1370 x 913 x 35 mm

5. The Trees at Home (2010-12) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1370 x 1830 x 35 mm

6. Other Worldly (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1370 x 1838 x 35 mm

7. Places Like Home (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 914 x 1372 x 35 mm

8. Storm in a Teacup (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 913 x 1372 x 35 mm

9. Sweet Home (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 913 x 1370 x 33 mm

“Come Back” is Anita DeSoto’s first exhibition since her residency in Leipzig

in 2010 and it reveals that residency has had a profound impact upon

every aspect of her painting practise. The palette has broadened

enormously, the role of story-telling is noticeably more complex, certain

and assured. The centrality of autobiography and (Christian-inspired)

symbolism has been replaced by surreal allegories which have ‘push-pull’

tensions and suggestive conflicts that traverse home and event, reaching

into the green-field environment where people live and act.

Trees, branches and leaves sprout from hands; men are being pulled from

the ground, with shuttlecock-shaped petticoats of trees where legs should

be. This powerful environmental metaphor and visual motif functions in

numerous ways and elicits much wonder. What are we seeing? Are these

dreams with messages of hope, moments of despair or successful rescue?

Or is it uproot and dislocation? This plurality and ambiguity transforms

DeSoto’s work.

DeSoto’s masterful use of light animates all the works as do sensations of

suspension and the on-going processes of a journey. Moments of spiritual

quest appear yet these teeter between offerings of loss and gain. There

are incidences of farce everywhere – a teapot being poured into rising

water; a half-figure emerges from a table; a bowed girl stands atop

coloured bubbles; a woman – her head contained by a bubble – views

her own reflection or magnifies the world.

All prices are NZD and include GST; Prices are current at the time of the exhibition

E X H I B I T I O N P R I C E L I S T

1 Nearly Home (2012) 6,000

2 Abor Spiritus (2011) 5,000

3 Man of the Upside Down World (2012) 5,000

4 Homesick (2012) 5,000

5 The Trees at Home (2011-12) 10,000

6 Other Worldly (2011) 10,000

7 Places Like Home (2012) 5,000

8 Storm in a Teacup (2012) 6,000

9 Sweet Home (2012) 5,000

Anita DeSoto 2012 CV Milford Galleries Dunedin www.milfordgalleries.co.nz

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ANITA DESOTO lives Dunedin

Other Worldly (2012)

Anita DeSoto’s lush paintings are dreamscapes; viewers are drawn in by a domestic familiarity, but are

kept on edge by the inexplicability of the activities and settings. Drawing on Freudian ideas of the Uncanny, DeSoto’s works hint at the unknown fears that underlie the veneer of the day-to-day. Her use of detailed realism combines with elements of the carnivalesque and religiosity to create a heightened tension within her paintings. Influenced also by 19th century German Romanticism, DeSoto’s images approach the traditional idea

of the ‘Sublime’, enticing the viewer to the brink of experience where beauty and terror become one and the same. The sensuality with which she paints her nudes serves to enhance an intrinsic sense of dread and anxiety in her carefully staged tableaux, where nothing is as it seems. Using Renaissance glazing techniques of oil paint application and traditional canvas construction, the methodology of DeSoto’s practice places her works firmly in an historical timeline that reinforces her

symbolic and metaphorical allusions to religious and historical painting. In doing so, she is also able to subvert these selfsame tropes, intensifying their sense of the ‘unheimlich’, of an eerie familiarity. Anita DeSoto lives in Waitati, north of Dunedin and exhibits in Dunedin and Auckland. She has lectured in Drawing at Otago Polytechnic School of Art since 2004. Awarded Parklane Art Award 2006, the McAlister Award 2004, Cleveland Award 2003. MFA Otago School of Art 2003, BFA Otago School of Art 2000. In 2010 she gained a residency at LIA to participate in the Leipzig International Art Programme.

Anita DeSoto 2012 CV Milford Galleries Dunedin www.milfordgalleries.co.nz

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ANITA DESOTO lives Dunedin

EDUCATION

2003 Master of Fine Arts at Otago Polytechnic School of Art, Dunedin 2000 Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2012 Come Back, Milford Galleries Dunedin 2010 Sign Post from God, Oedipus Rex Gallery, Auckland

2009 Cross My Heart, Milford Galleries Dunedin 2008 Pie In The Sky, Oedipus Rex Gallery, Auckland 2007 Away, Away, Milford Galleries Dunedin 2006 Votive & Lies, Oedipus Rex Gallery, Auckland 2005 Limbus, The Temple Gallery, Dunedin 2003 Desire Drapes Everything, The Temple Gallery, Dunedin

1999 Love Stories, Sirenz, Dunedin 1998 Prodigal Daughter, Sirenz, Dunedin

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2012 Art in Practice, University of Otago ,Dunedin Molly Morpeth Canady Art Award Exhibition 2011/12 Summer Show, Milford Galleries Dunedin 2011 The Smith &Yallop Memorial Exhibition, A Gallery, Dunedin 2010/11 Summer Show, Milford Galleries Dunedin 2010 Spinnerie, Germany

2007/08 Summer Show, Milford Galleries Dunedin 2006 Discomposures, The Temple Gallery, Dunedin Parklane Art Awards, Artist Gallery, Parnell The Adam Portraiture Award & Exhibition, The New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Wellington Summer Show, Milford Galleries Dunedin 2005 Past Winners, The Cleveland Living Arts Centre, The Railway Station, Dunedin

Some Plus One, Otago Polytechnic School of Art lecturers, Segue Gallery, Dunedin 2004 Southern Lights, The Temple Gallery, Dunedin Small Works, Peter Rae Gallery, Dunedin Annual Spring Festival Guest Artist, Anderson Park Art Gallery, Invercargill Cleveland Art Awards, Cleveland Living Arts Centre, Dunedin 2003 Large Art, Cleveland Living Arts Centre, Dunedin

Post Raphaelites, The Temple Gallery, Dunedin. Cleveland Art Awards, Cleveland Living Arts Centre 2000 Divine World Descend, Otago Polytechnic School of Art 1998 Winter Solstice Exhibition, Arc Café, Dunedin

AWARDS & RESIDENCIES

2010 Residency at LIA Leipzig International Art Programme, Germany 2006 First Prize, Portrait Category, Parklane Art Awards, Auckland Museum 2004 The McAlister Award Highly Commended Cleveland Award

2003 Cleveland Premier Award 2003 Derivan Art Award 2000 Recognition of Achievement in Painting Otago Polytechnic School of Art

BIBLIOGRAPHY 2009 Benson, Nigel, ‘Seduced by Flesh, Myth, and Love’, Otago Daily Times, Thursday July 12, 2009 2007 McCluskey, Maari, ‘Drawn From Life: The Art of Anita DeSoto’, Art New Zealand 123 Winter 2007