Still Life with Moving Parts

Still Life with Moving Parts is an exhibition created by outsider artists. Outsider art is art by self-taught or naïve art makers. Typically, those labelled as outsider artists have little or no contact with the mainstream art world or art institutions. Outsider art illustrates different visual constructions, a different way of seeing, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds – and hopefully for the viewer a new and enlightening experience.

Anna Crichton set up a studio container on the Auckland waterfront in 2020 and worked with outsider artists. They explored the downtown city waterfront and with their clipboards, paper and pencil in hand drew what inspired them – buildings, bollards, birds, and more. The imagery was scaled up onto mural panels and painted by the artists. The experience of being on a busy waterfront walkway engaged the curious and very impressed public who came to chat and discuss the work with the artists, came to dance a waltz, and just came to ‘be there’ in an environment that was often brand new to their lives. The artists then met with Anna Crichton each week at a workshop in Titirangi where Anna provided artists with brushes, canvas and paint to create their work.

Enjoy these moving works not for what they are ‘worth’ but for the artists’ pure joy of expressing ideas and passions that might not otherwise be easy for many of these artists.

Artists: Jared Barrington, Shannon Bowden, Nathan Child, Danny Cope, Rose Davidson-Feather, Pippin Fraser, Jonathan Gill, Michael Peach, Jessie Steele, Bob Stevenson, Samuel Wilcox – Curated by Anna Crichton