In her new exhibition at Bartley Company Art, Marie Le Lievre reveals and expands on the diversity of interests and strategies that have characterised her work over the past decade.

Long interested in disrupting notions of purity, Marie is the sumptuous oil abstractionist who hints at psychosocial baggage, explicitly stacks the building blocks of form, and loosely draws in graphite the paraphernalia of everyday life. Here these components come together in a coherent installation that pushes into new terrain -- experimenting with materials and techniques and introducing symbolic imagery.

With a highly commended award in the recent 2016 Parkin Drawing Prize, Marie's new works also see the drawn line taking a more prominent place in her mark making -- pencil lines doodle, dance, scratch and hieroglyphically wend their way across the delicately gessoed surfaces.

Titles play alongside the work suggesting readings and capturing contradictions in her own bodies of work and in art and the artist's place and role in the world: Bulletproof Falling -- invincible and fallible, magical and fragile.

Marie Le Lievre completed a Master of Fine Arts with distinction at the University of Canterbury in 2008. She has exhibited throughout New Zealand and in Australia, France and Japan. Her work is in a wide range private and public collections.

Artist and architect Ri Williamson has written a text to accompany Marie's exhibition. Please contact us if you would like a copy of this text.

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