Exhibitions Auckland

ANDREW MARTIN

Room Service
'Home Improvements to Wind Up This Decade'

Room Service is a new 3,000 foot gallery offering exhibition space to established and emergent New Zealand artists in all media. Its promoters, Tim Coffee and John Draper, see it as creating a bridge between conventional art and performing or environmental works.

Room Service's first exhibition, Home Improvements ... was an invitational show of twenty-two submitting and seven performing artists. The gallery's directors and their contributors have committed themselves to works that move away from precious and elitist forms of art into less intimidating, more approachable areas. Ideas are expressed in the unlikely forms of the bed-head, the portable bar, the holland-blind, the screen and the room-divider. It is a witty and varied sampling of work - one that heralds the appearance of a refreshingly original art venue in the city.

Duncan Ryder
Lance Worsley

The R. Ts Art Gallery is housed in a charming old two-storey wooden building in Parnell Road, just opposite the Exchange Tavern. The director, Rita Webster, established it with the object of encouraging, especially, young local artists. Two new artists who recently had a joint exhibition here are Duncan Ryder and Lance Worsley - a collection of both paintings and wall-sculptures.

LANCE WORSLEY
Soft to Touch 1982
wood and acrylic

Ryder and Worsley met at the A.T. I, where they worked together in the construction and exhibition of environmental works. They have collaborated more recently on a piece shown in Room Service's opening exhibition - a wall-hanging in wood and acrylic: Soft to Touch.

DUNCAN RYDER
Conceal 1982
oil on canvas 410 x 360 mm.