This looks like an interesting show by New Zealand artist ENO, so be sure to get along to Backwoods Gallery this Friday night the 18th of July.

“An interest in the controversy surrounding early 20th century painter Charles. F. Goldie forms the basis for Drawing Blood, a body of work by Eno (Mikaere Gardiner) that confronts dogmas surrounding truth, taboo and the effects of colonization. Goldie’s paintings of Maori chiefs and princesses were a far cry from the typical portraiture of that era.
Goldie saw a race dying as a result of war and colonisation. Despite their precise detail, his works were considered by many critics at the time to be anthropological studies that belonged in a museum, not an art gallery. Yet these works are now regarded as the pinnacle of high art of that era, and Goldie himself as one of New Zealand’s most important artists.Eno draws on Goldie’s enduring will to capture the truth by reinterpreting the often solemn, weathered expressions in his subjects as a device to illuminate the dichotomy between the throwaway nature of celebrity culture and the retrospective acknowledgment of the disdained.
In Eno’s works we find the facial Ta moko (a traditional tattoo practice symbolic of high status) have been embellished with sailor tattoos – at once a candid remark on the harrowing effects that European colonisation had on the traditional values and cultural beliefs of the Maori people and a wry comment on the passing nature of trends in contemporary society. Having recently begun Ta moko, Eno fuses both his painting and tattooing practices to investigate the cultural significance of his Maori and European genealogy.
Acclaimed for his large scale murals, Drawing Blood sees the artist work on an intimate scale, using acrylic paints, tattoo inks and aerosol across various sized paintings on industrial boxing card as well as a number of smaller sculptures that reference Pataka, traditional Maori houses used to store food.”

Who: ENO.
What: Drawing Blood.
When: This Friday the 18th Of July.
Where: Backwoods Gallery. 25 Easey Street Collingwood. 

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