Artist Profile
Wellesley Binding
Wellesley Binding emigrated from Australia in 1974 and has been working as an artist in New Zealand since then, exhibiting in numerous public and private galleries and award shows. In 2003 he completed his MFA at Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland and is now a Fine Arts Lecturer at EIT in Hawkes Bay.
In Binding’s words, "Like many painters today, I wander the border region between figurative painting and abstract painting, between narrative content and formal proposition, between image and mark, between illusion and paint. Contradictions. Many painters tend toward one of each extreme, in a logic of painting as object v painting as a narrative vehicle. I am happy to be a middle man.
This is a safe place for painting to ‘bide its time’, tick over, and hope for something interesting to turn up... I work with and within those contradictions; they seem to resemble the same contradictions within experience itself.
I work by a rule: A theme or narrative is a necessary fiction in order to get painting, and paint in a certain way, the way it turns out. That makes decisions about process and what to put in and what to leave out a nervous procedure. Whatever a painting may be ‘about’, a painting for me is a unique argument for, and instance of, a certain way of doing things. From time to time that changes."
'Three Studies for the Island'
Artist: Wellesley Binding
Description: [Acrylic, Water Based Enamel, Graphite, Coloured Pencil, & Intron Print on MDF]
Wellesley Binding was born in Melbourne Australia in 1946, and emigrated to New Zealand in 1974. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland.
Since 1992, he's been a lecturer in Visual Arts at IDEAschool at EIT Hawkes Bay. Wellesley has a substantial CV of exhibitions in public galleries (inc. Hastings City Art gallery, Napier Museum.) as well as dealer galleries (incl. Muse gallery, Milford Galleries.)
He has also been selected as a finalist for several prestigious art awards (inc. Wallace Award, National Art Award, Norswear Award.)
Connection to Roy: I became fully aware of Roy when he selected me for the 'Bay 8 Exhibition' he curated in 1993 (I think it was). I responded to a number of similar invites from him over the years. He opened my Arrival retrospective at the Globe Gallery in 2004.
Roy was an insightful and generous commentator on my work, in print and in person, always open and encouraging to encounter: modesty and forthrightness uniquely combined. Roy never got in the way, like many people do when they talk about art; he was on the road with you.
He performed that invaluable other perspective for me and for many others. I have felt especially ‘met’, by his appreciation of my Waikaremoana works.
Size / dimentions: 600mm x 600mm Diameter - Each
Media Type: Mixed Media, Painting
