In the side gallery, we present a small solo exhibition by Hamish Coleman with several drawings being exhibited for the first time. The Sublunary Drawings have been freed from the confines of the artist’s sketchpad and beautifully stitched onto dark crimson or midnight blue velvet mounted in stained oak frames. The result is an intriguing combination: a tease of the tension between an artist’s preparatory processes and a finished artwork; a play with light and dark; slightness and subtance.

For Coleman, the word sublunary refers to the subject matter of his drawings, literally meaning beneath the moon. He depicts things that are ordinary and familiar to him, belonging to this world rather than a higher realm.

The drawings are paired with two paintings to create a conversation across his practice which explores the interface of the actual and the remembered, blending the genres of landscape and portraiture. Imagery is taken from screen shots of self-shot video footage – a process which gives Coleman great pleasure: There’s a certain thrill in capturing a split-second image from a film and spending weeks or months rendering it in paint. I call these screen captures ‘non-images’, and they are what I’m searching for. It’s as if the figure, land and trees were caught off guard, or as if I were a second too slow in capturing a posed scene found through a conventional photograph.

Coleman graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) from the Ilam School of Fine Art at the University of Canterbury, in 2012. He has exhibited throughout New Zealand and has work in private and public collections.