It's a match

Speed Dating is an exhibition of work from two artists, Ed Bats and Tyler Jackson, at Play Station, an artist run gallery space in Wellington.

We met Ed Bats earlier this year (Art Zone #75) as he prepared a new series of painting assemblages for Gallery9’s group showing at Sydney Contemporary in September.

Ed Bats, 'Blind mono'. Acrylic on canvas & venetian blind

Vintage venetian blinds took pride of place then, and can be spotted in Speed Dating too. ‘I’ve sourced these blinds over the course of a few months and have made subsequent canvas monochromes to join them,’ said Ed, ‘They incorporate a vague sense of interaction.’

Speed Dating, installation view. Image courtesy of play_station.

It seems fitting that an item that provides privacy has been incorporated in Ed’s work. The four-time Wallace Art Award finalist says he doesn’t like the idea of giving up his own privacy, and works under an alias because ‘I want people to look at my work, and not a photo of me standing in front of it.’ He’s excited to exhibit at home in Wellington, ‘because it means people I'm surrounded by can actually see it.’

Ed Bats, 'The odd scroll-up', 2017 - 2018. Stretcher bars, vinyl and steel pipe. Image courtesy of play_station.

Tyler Jackson, who is a facilitator at Play Station gallery, made it into our Education Special in 2016 (Art Zone #67) when his sculptural works were on display in Massey University’s Exposure 2016. The same year Jackson won the NZ Art Show 2016 Emerging Artist Award. Recent projects include ‘Between the beach and the lounge’ in Mexico City and ‘Traces: the part encodes the whole’, at Tacit Gallery in Hamilton – both this year. For Speed Dating, Jackson explores ‘the aesthetic intrinsic relationship between industrial minimalist materiality versus the immateriality of light and colour.’

Tyler Jackson, 'No title (Teal/GH82)', 2018. Thermoformed plexiglas, aluminium and lacquer. Image courtesy of play_station.

Speed Dating

Play Station, Wellington

Until 8 December