Past Exhibition: Ewan McDougall - 'Open Slather'
Front Gallery, 13th–31st August 2008
Featuring recent works, Open Slather is Ewan McDougall’s fiftieth solo exhibition as an ‘expressionist painter in Aotearoa.’ Since the early 1990s, McDougall’s characteristically grinning stick-figures have drummed and waved their way across his loud, impasto canvases – like rock-star hedonists partying hard after the concert, or acid-freaks set loose in an abattoir (McDougall played in psychedelic bands in the 1970s and spent 13 years as a freezing worker). Seemingly naive, McDougall’s paintings are, in reality, slyly sophisticated dissections of art, consumerism and contemporary New Zealand culture. However cutting, McDougall’s satires are, nonetheless, basically good-humoured and reflect Open Slather’s admonishment to ‘give everything to affirm yourself, your talent and your passions. And stuff the negative voice!’