by Helen Martin
A graduate of Art History (BA, Auckland University, 1997) and Textile and Surface Design (BA Hons, Robert Gordon University, Scotland, 2006) Helensville resident Kiri Abraham, who has exhibited her work in Scotland, England and New Zealand, was the feature artist in Helensville Art Centre’s August exhibition.
The gallery’s white walls provided the ideal backdrop for Kiri’s work, a series of finely-wrought sketches inspired by treasures brought in from outside by her three children – stones, pods, acorn cups, leaves, flowers, dried cicada shells. Presented as abstracted forms these everyday natural things, in images described by Kiri as “filled with tiny, meditative lines”, take on a life of their own, textured forms that recall their source while presenting their beauty in new ways.
Kiri named her exhibition ‘Safe Houses’ in recognition of the fact that creating the works provided her with an absorbing creative project with a life of its own outside the chaos of daily life. One measure of the success of exhibition was the fact that 16 of the 30 works on show sold on opening night.
