City Art is a conservation framing workshop and gallery offering a range of museum-standard picture framing and art care services to artists, art collectors, museums and galleries.

Zina Swanson

Christchurch painter and sculptor Zina Swanson graduated from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 2003 with a major in sculpture. Since then her drawing and sculptural practices have plied the benign-malign dichotomoy of the organic world – fine plants, roots, tendrils and vines melding into or infiltrating human forms in a delicate, meticulously crafted investigation of a vaguely sinister ecology. Zina has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions throughout the country. In 2004 she won the prestigious CoCA/Anthony Harper Award with her elegant cylindrical tower of glass ampules reflected in a pool of mirror glass. 

In “Recent Drawings” Zina Swanson renders in meticulous detail the unfurling and unfolding of organic forms, a spring-like budding in which the human form appears as small botanic organisms, the original Kewpie doll grafted on to the fine branches of a thistle or tree. Swanson’s use of Indian ink, tea and pencil gently erode the boundaries between whimsy and science, between natural organic forms and the detailed construction of new life forms. This exhibition presents an alluring dichotomy of frailty and delicacy – at times the tea barely brushes the surface of the paper – and an enduring strength of line, movement and purpose, epitomised by the imagery of the fine feathery branches balanced by the supporting root stock, thick with life-giving sap.

Gallery:

Peter Adsett
Mark Braunias
Marcus Capes
Peter Carson
Stephen Clarke
Allen Cox
Michael Dell
Andrew Drummond
Guy Frederick
Michael Hamblett
Jeffrey Harris
Roger Hickin
Maree Horner
Kathryn Madill
Michael Reed
Zina Swanson
Philip Trusttum