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2023

  • Samsung Artist takeover - New Zealand wide Samsung locations (collabration)

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2022

  • Pretty Invaders - Spencer on Byron (solo show)

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2021

  • TENT - Foenander Gallery (group exhibition)

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2020

  • Island Nation - Foenander Gallery  (solo show)

  • Semicolon - Unlimited Potential Real Estate, Herne Bay  & Foenander Gallery (group exhibition)

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2019

  • Pocket Edition - NorthArt Gallery  (group exhibition)

  • For the Birds - Foenander Gallery  (solo show)

  • Drawings and Works on Paper - NorthArt Gallery  (group exhibition)

  • Small Works Salon - NKB Gallery  (group exhibition)

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2018​

  • Lands End - NKB Gallery  (solo show)

  • Pocket Edition - NorthArt Gallery  (group exhibition)

  • Animals - NorthArt Gallery  (group exhibition)

  • Rock, Paper, Scissors - NKB Gallery  (group exhibition)

  • Paper  - NorthArt Gallery  (group exhibition)

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2017​

  • Archipelago - NKB Gallery  (solo show)

  • Estranged - Depot Artspace.  (group exhibition)

  • MAGS Fine Art Show - Mount Albert Grammar School  (fundraising exhibition)

  • Pocket Edition - NorthArt Gallery  (group exhibition)

  • Drawings - NorthArt Gallery  (group exhibition)

  • Artist's Self Portraits - NorthArt Gallery  (group exhibition)

  • 40th RSM Plunket Art Show - Aigantighe Art Gallery Gallery  (charity exhibition)

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2016​

  • Water & Oil - NKB Gallery  (solo show)

  • A Day on the Farm - Waiheke Island Gallery (group exhibition)

  • Choc-a-bloc - Auckland Gallery  (group exhibition)

  • Member's Show - NorthArt Gallery  (group exhibition)

  • Landscape Without Birds - 100 Days Project​

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2015​

  • Life.Still - 100 Days Project

  • Mairangi Arts Centre - 1st Prize for Painting (Art Award)

  • Kiwiana Christmas - Waiheke Art Gallery (group exhibition)

  • Tangled Up In Blue - NKB Gallery (group exhibition)

  • Autumn Collection -  Parnell Gallery (group exhibition)

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2014​

  • 300 x 300 x 300 - 300 x 300 x 300 (group exhibition)

  • Art Of Courage - Longview Gallery  (charity exhibition)

  • The Figure in art - Uxbridge Creative Centre (group exhibition)

  • 10 Years -   The Artist's Room  (group exhibition)

  • Adam Portrait Award -   New Zealand Portrait Gallery  (finalist - people's choice)

  • Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Award -   Whakatāne Exhibition Centre  (finalist)

  • RDNZ -   Percy Thomson Gallery  (group exhibition)

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I am an Island  ( Limited Edition )

Following Mental Health Awareness Week – Föenander Galleries, with Unlimited Potential Real Estate hosted an offsite exhibition to raise funds for Lifeline Aotearoa. The exhibition talks to Mental Health and was centred on the brief: ‘Semicolon’. The semicolon is an opportunity for a story to continue rather than end.

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It was inspired by Project Semicolon, this message has been transposed as a symbol in the mental health world defining itself as “dedicated to presenting hope and love for those who are struggling with mental illness, suicide, addiction and self-injury”, and “exists to encourage, love and inspire”

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Over 40 artworks were exhibited from gallery artists and further afield. All gallery profit was donated to Lifeline Aotearoa’s mission to change and save lives.

 My painting looks at an island as a metaphor for the individual - we may dream to own our own island; to be king of our own domain, but to be stranded in solitude upon a deserted isle is also an cliched tragedy, I enjoy this dichotomy as an internal duality of mind. We are free but bound by our own constraints of mind.

The letterbox signifies that the island is 'possessed' by someone and the pencil drawing of a house is what could be, a cottage with a view, a santuary and piece of mind. Achievable if you fully realise your potential.... your dreams and ambitions are a building that you yourself must construct.

Island Nation recalls the themes of western symbolist painting, alongside the techniques and drama of the 18C Romantic painters. This new series of paintings presents a variety of isolated islands with a range of familiar local habitations. In each painting the oceans, structures, mood and time of day all vary, they are a string of atomised islands in flux, connected by the oceans which encompass them and the relentless course of history.

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These quiet islands evoke mystery with their ambiguous narrative content, allowing the mood and atmosphere – along with the objects and structures within them – to speak directly to the viewer. This effect is nostalgic and deeply familiar, while retaining a sense of enigma and other-worldliness. Each painting leaves evidence of human occupation without any sign of the individuals who might inhabit these spaces which is where the intrigue and mystery lies; allowing these works to be seen as metaphor for personal journey – creating a window-like view to an inner world – a place for self-reflection.

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It is notable in some of these new works, large pendant like objects are being suspended into the paintings from beyond the frame. These flat and sometimes graphic objects, on one hand seem at odds with the scale and sensual painterly handling of oil in the scenes below – yet they also function symbiotically, as if to suggest these isolated group of islands are part of a much larger story.

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James Brown

Foenander Gallery