Colour Cathedral

Darryn George: Pulse
Christchurch Art Gallery (William A. Sutton Room)
9 March – August 2008

Darryn George’s installation here is light years more exciting than his recent, related, Gow Langsford painting exhibition in Auckland which was hampered by the muddled variety of its images, its overworked textures and too complicated Christian/Maori symbolism.

This Christchurch show was executed by professional sign painters working directly onto the walls, and is exciting because of its physicality. It is an amazing experience to walk around the huge room, the designed motifs are so rhythmically and chromatically intense. The super saturated colour gets absorbed by every pore in your body, and the intense walls, the front one repeating the number ‘Waru’ (eight: the eight day of the week, a mystical, spiritually focussed day), pulse with an octane energy that pleasurably steamrolls over you.

This is a particularly successful treatment of this space. Hopefully it is the first of many such spectacles to come.