OPENING EVENT: Tuesday 10th December, 5.30 - 7.30pm

Ice Cream Salad is an exhibition organised by Kirstin Carlin, an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. It brings together selected works by artists that capture a sense of enjoyment.

Like ice cream it is a bit fun and like salad it is also serious.

Ice cream, like paint is all viscosity, it involves a transformation of raw ingredients that are whipped together then frozen before being scooped up to slowly melt in the midst of a warm tongue.

A mixed salad, much like this collection of artists, is thrown together with a sense of insouciance, it is a gathering together of different elements in the hope of creating something whole and coherent.

Each of the paintings, all by women artists, evoke very diverse ways of engaging with the process of painting.

The works selected all represent a way of painting that "lets paint do its thing." There is thick and lumpy paint, a focus on carefully moving paint around, squiggles and bright colours, sensitive responses to surface and shadow, flower paintings and even a work created from excess paint left over from making other paintings.

Of prime importance is painting with a sense of enjoyment. The hope is that this sense of fun can then be experienced by those who view the finished artworks.

The above text is an excerpt from a small publication co-ordinated by Victoria Wynne-Jones with design by Warren Olds at Fount-Via which accompanies this exhibition. Limited numbers in print are available from the gallery but will also be available online.

Certain works appear courtesy of the artists' galleries: Stella Corkery (Michael Lett), Cat Fooks (Anna Miles Gallery), Saskia Leek (Ivan Anthony Gallery), Layla Rudneva- Mackay (Starkwhite) and Salome Tanuvasa (Tim Melville).

Image: Layla Rudneva-Mackay (detail)