Bartley Company Art is pleased to present Richard Orjis' first solo exhibition in Wellington. In {Ground,} Orjis continues his exploration of the ritualisation of nature in culture. Painting and photography are installed with rustic ceramics and candles to evoke a sense of magical paganism and timeless rites designed, like crop fertility rituals, to foster fecundity or contemporary environmental change.


Artist Statement:{ Ground

}{Looking down for answers.

The ground under our feet, the soil, the clay, it ties us to earth. It is our foundation, our place in the world, our home, our t}{ū}{rangawaewae.

From it grows our food and into it once we die we dissolve.

Cycles.

Past and present collide.

The root of the word paradise comes from ancient Persian: it means walled garden.

Looking around for answers.

Ritualizing the everyday. Home as shrine. Appreciating simple useful things.

Looking, thinking, touching, digging, making.


}Biography

Orjis has a Master of Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland and teaches at the Manukau Institute of Technology. He has exhibited widely and has had exhibitions in New York, Basel, Miami, Madrid, Barcelona, Paris as well as New Zealand. His work is in private and public collections nationally and internationally.

!!!