16 May – 3 June 2023

Road to the Mountain 2023 acrylic on canvas 910 x 1220mm

Prakash Patel describes himself as feeling out of place – everywhere. From a very early age, painting offered an expression for his sense of cultural dislocation, and a means of bridging the gulf between the Gujarati background of his parents, and the culture of provincial New Zealand in the 1970s.

At first glance, Patel’s paintings appear deeply and consciously steeped in his Indian heritage, with their repeating patterns and motifs and the bright, iridescent colours. On closer inspection, they offer something more universal. The canvases are transformed into a night sky filled with stars, comets and craters on distant planets, into the home of fireflies or exploding firecrackers. Or – equally, they plunge us into the depths of an unknown ocean, inhabited by strange luminescent creatures, swaying in warm, unseen currents.

They are exquisite, mysterious, and determinedly indefinable.

Sea Garden acrylic on canvas 1040 x 1600mm

Immigrant 2023 acrylic on canvas 960 x 690mm

Night Bush 2023 acrylic on canvas 1220 x 910mm

Pilgrim 2023 acrylic on canvas 1050 x 610mm