2 Exhibitions

Overview

MOP's two current shows are stained with colours. Reko Rennie's Black Magic takes a leaf from Warhol, presenting four big linen canvases of spray paint cans, deified on a luminescent background of purples, or greens, or silvers, and black. The can is outside the art in a seemingly infinite space teeming with adoration or divinity. Staring at the frames, the background falls away and the cans hover in the centre of your field of view. In the cans' labels, the space goes on. At the back of the room is the glowing neon-lit Black Magic, with its neon colours shimmering the same hues as the screen prints around it. Rennie's work shimmers and beguiles, inviting you into a world where the bright lights never fail, and inanimate things buzz with energy and meaning. Even if you're never quite sure what the meaning is. Rennie is an indigenous artist who came to more mainstream art via graffiti, a journey summed up in the Message Stick titles of his images' long, thin cans of spray paint.

Mark Titmarsh and Todd Robinson's Public Fitting is paint-splattered, a series of clothes spattered with acrylic paints. The clothes hang empty and abandoned in the centre of their gallery. Greens, greys and reds deform dresses shirts, shoes and coats, dripping down onto spotted cloths. The colours deform and enhance the outfits, much like Titmarsh's solo catwalk, which runs down one side of the gallery splaying paint on the covers of books - blue, red & pink splotches - like well-loved volumes in an painter's studio.

Image by Rekko Rennie.