On show in Soho

Out From Down Under and Beyond: an Exhibition of Fine Art from Australia and New Zealand is currently showing at the Agora Gallery in Soho, New York. Helga Windle (pictured) from Buller, West Coast, who “merges Symbolist imagery and Expressionist energy in her starkly simplified oils,” is one of the NZ artists exhibiting. Another is Samoan-born, Wellington resident Anna Crawley, whose paintings, in the words of gallery director Angela Di Bellow, “exhibit strength, with radiant forms emerging and dissolving out of equally radiant ground.” According to the gallery’s press release, “the best artists from [this] part of the world combine a sense of national identity with a quirky originality Ö it is high time that we began to regard the art of Australia and NZ in general as important ingredients in the eclectic mix of contemporary painting.”