A current exhibition, Nature’s Symphony, by Marilyn Rea-Menzies at the Left Bank Art Gallery in Māwhera/ Greymouth features tapestries, drawings and paintings, each one an exploration of the colours and textures of the forests of the Coast.
Rea-Menzies works diligently and with intelligence, both emotional and cerebral, a discipline that began in childhood in the Buller, surrounded by river and forest. Specialising in tapestry since 1980, the year she discovered the art form, her long experience in art began in 1946 when, at the age of two, she mixed black shoe polish and washing powder together and painted the wash house walls. Experimentation is in her blood.
This show is comprised of tapestries, paintings and drawings. Some of the latter two are of whole scenes, some of close-ups of the forest: a feather, tangled vines, leaves on the ground. The tapestries are displayed in clusters, each large irregular shaped piece surrounded by smaller glimpses of forest life. This organic displaying is effective. Bigger pieces cling to the walls of the gallery, lichen-like, inviting the viewer to come closer and peer into another colour-filled world, while the smaller shapes highlight tiny sections. It is as though the viewer is focusing down to the minute, just as a walk in the forest gradually reveals the textures and colours that exist in the detail. Echoing the living forms of lichens and mosses the weavings use constraint effectively, reinforcing the natural and doing away with the formal.
These branches and mosses exist beyond the edges of the tapestries; imagination fills in the blank spaces between the works. Some of the most striking are filled with vibrant colour; a lichen-yellowed branch, and blue and pink growths. The textures are varied with fibrous growth and three-dimensional platelets, with the warp of each tapestry adding another element of light and shadow. This is a show by a tapestry weaver of international significance and exceptional patience and skill. It reveals a world that is often hidden and rejoices in the natural world of New Zealand’s forests.
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