Darryn George

George trained as an artist at the Ilam School of Fine Arts in Canterbury and graduated with a BFA in painting in 1993. He subsequently completed a Diploma in Teaching, and then, studied towards a MFA (painting) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. George is the Head of the Art Department at Christ’s College in Christchurch.^[1]

George connects minimalist abstraction and the politics of photographic reproduction which has long influenced New Zealand art. George explores the contrast between the sheen and glossy photographic images accessible in books and the textural quality of paintings when encountered in real life. Whereas George uses abstract patterns that recall the pristine and hard-edged aspect of photographic representations in books, his paintings also include subtleties on the surface such as ridges and wobbly lines differentiating it from photographic reproductions.^[2]

George has an interesting work process. While he principally works with oil on canvas, George primarily envisions his works on computer screens playing around with size, colours, motifs, orientation and texture, adding and amending elements which have been present in his work since 2003. Such experiments result in a group of images which become paintings and other which George archives on his computer. George’s paintings contain both abstract and figurative designs including numbers, symbols and words. The palette for George’s works remains strongly connected to its place and Maori heritage as does the range of symbols which can be found in his paintings such as the kowhaiwhai, tā moko and koru patterns.^[3]

George has exhibited widely around New Zealand and Australia and is represented by several galleries including Gow Langsford Gallery in Auckland, Brooke Gifford Gallery in Christchurch,^[4] Peter McLeavey Gallery in Wellington and The Gallery at Woollaston in Nelson.^[5]

George has received several awards over the years:^[6]

• 1994 Te Waka Toi Grant
• 1998 Arts Council of New Zealand Grant for Melbourne Project at SPAN Galleries
• 2000 Finalist in Wallace Art Award
• 2000 Creative New Zealand funding for Melbourne Art Fair
• 2004 Te Waka Toi Grant
• 2007 Deutsche Bank Head Office NZ commission