Art Nouveau with a twist | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

The Belle Epoch sounds a demure yet distinct hometown note with the latest exhibition from Masterton artists AJ Hunter and Carol Banner.

Hunter said yesterday the exhibition, titled Tech Nouveau, fuses pencil and pastel imagery from Banner with his fractals and photography while featuring slices of Wairarapa background scenes including Queen Elizabeth Park and Cape Palliser, digitally woven about fellow Masterton artist Katie Grantham, Carterton district councillor Jill Greathead, and schoolgirl Sophie Balasoglou, 12, who each serve as models.

Hunter said the Art Nouveau styles made famous by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha and American illustrator Maxfield Parrish in part form a base for the exhibition with pieces re-imagined and digitally reworked, and while staying true to the originals in some detail "do not contain a single pixel of the original works".

"I've always liked Art Nouveau ever since I read Edith Howell's lavishly Art Nouveau illustrated children's books as a child and I became acquainted with the work of Maxfield Parrish when I lived in America.

"Then I realised last year that a woman had been dropped in to my lap Katie Grantham, who was taking my computer graphics art class at UCOL and she had the red hair and even skin tone of the Art Nouveau models of the time."

Hunter said the exhibition blends the styles of both Mucha and Parrish and adds mathematically created fractal art "and samples from Carol's beautiful and elegant original pastel artwork to create a new hi-tech digital version of Art Nouveau for the 21st century".

The original Art Nouveau movement flourished between about 1890 and the start of World War I and was dubbed The Belle Epoch (French for the Beautiful Era) as a period in European history.

"In some of the pictures I have recreated high-resolution, full-colour versions of the original designs but given them a modern twist.

"In others I have used the original designs as a jump-off point and created something completely new," he said.

The entire exhibition, which opened on Saturday, runs until June 7 at Katz Gallery in Belvedere Road in Carterton.

n The entire exhibition, including image descriptions and links to the original works from which inspiration was drawn, may be viewed at www.oblivion-graphics.com