Images gradually revealed in latest Christchurch Art Gallery Outer Spaces project

An ambitious paste-up project by local artist Tjalling de Vries provides the next installment of Christchurch Art Gallery’s rapidly expanding Outer Spaces programme.

Tjalling is Innocent is a thirteen metre wide, nine metre high work on the back wall of the CoCA building and can be viewed from Worcester Boulevard. The work has been built up over several days using layers of printed paper sheets. Five images, each hugely magnified to the size of the wall, have been printed on hundreds of large paper sheets. These have been layered over the wall image by image and then torn back by the artist.

The result is a fragmented collage-like surface that recalls the peeling weather-beaten images gradually revealing themselves on the walls and bollards of Christchurch’s Central City red zone, says Christchurch Art Gallery curator Felicity Milburn.

"Collage has long been an important part of Tjalling's practice, often as the starting point for his large paintings, so it's very exciting to see him explore what is possible on such an ambitious scale.”

De Vries graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Master of Fine Arts in Painting in 2011. His eye-catching works have often incorporated images from a range of sources, including old comic books, that have been painted over, washed out or otherwise disrupted.

Christchurch Art Gallery director Jenny Harper says that the addition of the work to the Outer Spaces programme is a further demonstration of the Gallery’s impetus to create a Gallery without walls during its longer than anticipated period of closure.

“Tjalling’s work joins 16 others from Christchurch Art Gallery currently projecting art’s presence into the city and feeding the public imagination.

“It’s inspiring to consider what our artists and gallery staff have achieved; we have been delighted and reinforced by so many positive responses to the continued showing of art in different Outer Spaces in the city.”

Tjalling is Innocent is a Christchurch Art Gallery Outer Spaces project presented in association with CoCA.

For more information visit www.christchurchartgallery.org.nz.