“Nature Morte”
Roger Boyce
30 Sept → 22 Oct 2011

Nature Morte is a tripartite tableau that toys with ideas of representation and prevalent popular notions governing the reception of painted imagery and its subjects. The work comprises a fastidiously accurate three-dimensional transcription of a domestic-scale methamphetamine lab, a representational oil painting on linen, and a painter’s taboret crowded with all of the usual conventional, painterly accoutrements and chemistry. The work takes as its point of departure two clandestine activities: the socially sanctioned visual creative act, which more often than not takes place in the opacity of an artist’s studio, and the socially proscribed production of mind-altering substances, which operates – of illegal necessity – in undisclosed and hidden locations. These two activities are fictively united, turned inside out and made available for public viewing.

Roger Boyce lives and works in Christchurch, New Zealand. An American expat he has been based in New Zealand for seven years and lectures in painting at Canterbury University in Christchurch. Marie Claire Brehaut is an artist who lives and works in Christchurch, New Zealand. She has exhibited broadly across New Zealand in group and solo exhibitions.