Wayne Youle | Sticks & Stones: {Suite} Wellington

Wayne Youle’s latest exhibition is a ten-work series titled STICKS + STONES. 

This work started over a year ago, the day after Cyclone Gabrielle hit, and its devastating impact was felt across the motu.  The first painting began as a response to this major event - the series grew piece by piece, and at the tenth painting they stopped.

With a considered simplicity so often seen in Youle’s work, the paintings use only four colours, and consist of basic shapes: sticks placed and painted first, then stones after, both floating on blue bases. Evoking the aerial view of detritus and destruction after “the event”.

 “I hope the elements within each work repel and attract each other.” The contrast of surface and reflection pick up light, almost appearing metallic at times. Painted in high gloss enamel sitting on matt acrylic, Youle muses “there is something nostalgic about high gloss enamel that triggers the senses. I remember empty tin cans with paint brushes drowning in turps in my grandfather’s shed… they seemed to be there forever.”