The Layers

Carolyn Wilson &
Elle Freestone

4 August - 6 September 2026 | Whakaataranga Gallery

Elle Freestone creates massive, highly physical paintings. Her painting is embedded on the transient nature of process, materials and techniques. Freestone investigates her ideas through labour intensive activities that are designed to reveal, expose and emphasis buried visual information. To this end you may say the works are reductive or use a subtractive mode of revealing, however this over-simplifies what is an intense process – physically and intellectually.

Carolyn Wilson works in direct contrast. Her process begins with the intuitive layering of materials—each mark and gesture forming a foundation of expressive potential. These initial layers are not preserved and instead become sites of transformation. Through acts of erasure, subtraction, and reworking, Wilson challenges the permanence of her own gestures, allowing traces to remain while others are obscured or removed. Her final, compelling harmony is achieved through editing and control, resulting in a nuanced, excavated surface.

The exhibition is a conversation between these two contrasting paths to abstraction. Underpinning the works is The Layers poem by Stanley Kunitz which will be placed in both studios through the making of the works. This is a segment of the poem “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes.