Still Life with Landscape, is what you first see when you pull into any small town – the bright light, the static open spaces. It is only after looking closer, discovering more, that you begin to make out the landmarks and figures of those who inhabit that space.

At first glance, these new paintings are a drone-eye view of the plains, ravines and patchwork fenced-in farmland of the artist’s new home in the Wairarapa. As the eye ranges it teases out more information, figures and objects float through unhinged within the painted surface. The technological clutter that inhabits the visual topography of the everyday, acts as a buffer and diffuses the viewers focus.

Jackman treats his methodical process of collecting and re-rendering drawings of everyday objects to a rigorous, yet whimsical process. He likens this pick-and-choose approach as analogous to the modernist musical theory of ‘indeterminacy of composition’. Most famously utilized by John Cage, this experimental approach to music enabled a fluidity whereby the conceptual process employed by the artist was not below the content, but rather the process itself was brought to the forefront, with meaning and structure native to the presented layers of auditory content to float freely within a fixed plane.

A Pantone colour palete of what’s been trending globally over a three year period forms the basis for this series of works. As does an interest in Seurat’s pointillist technique known as ‘chromoluminarism’ – a method that utilises colours in patches that essentially trick the eye into blending them, creating luminance and shape. Fields of flat solid colour are arranged and held together with clean sharp lines which diverge, align, and intersect across the surface of these works. New forms appear and disappear, developing a complex web of relationships and endless a rythmic flow for the viewer to move through.

Adrian Jackman graduated in 1997 with an MFA from Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts and has exhibited widely thought New Zealand since, gaining a number of awards and residencies. His recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition at the Sarjeant Gallery (from the Tylee Cottage Artist in Residence) and Fields (2016) at nkb Gallery which was substantially reviewed in Art New Zealand, and National Business Review. His work is held in public, private and corporate collections across New Zealand & overseas: including the Wallace Arts Trust, The Sarjeant Gallery, Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui, Citibank Art Collection, Perpetual Guardian Trust, Auckland City Council.

John Daly-Peoples (NBR) exhibition review here