Broker Gallery is breaking the mould
The start of 2023 has been a busy one for Broker Gallery’s Founder & Director, Marc Blake. In addition to winning the supreme award at the Craigs Aspiring Art Prize, he headed up to Auckland to take part in the Aotearoa Art Fair, which ran 2-5 March, where Broker was the first ever Queenstown gallery selected to take part.
Broker closed out 2022 with a group exhibition called The Insiders, which continued to show into 2023. That exhibition was the fourteenth show for Broker since it opened in January 2021. The gallery is now preparing for its next exhibition – Marc is always trying to bring new ideas and approaches to contemporary art and is excited to see more facilities opening within the region.
One of Marc’s latest works, and the one that won him the Craigs Aspiring Art Prize supreme award, was also on display in Auckland. Happy Birthday is a printed digital artwork that has one small square painted on it. Marc has been using technology with his artwork for many years – he started drawing with computers when he was nine.
“It’s called Happy Birthday because the main image that became the catalyst for the work was a photo of my wife holding our son on his second birthday. That led to the rest of the work being created, which is a bit of a new direction for me – that’s the first one I’ve ever shown publicly, so to win that award was pretty amazing.
“They had a record number of entries this year with around 300 artists, and they doubled the prize money – that probably attracted more, including myself. I thought it was a good time to enter. It was nice to go over there and have a look at all the work,” says Marc.
It’s a thought-provoking piece and at first glance it appears to be a physical painting, and many people had thought this when looking at it. Happy Birthday includes photographs of other paintings Marc has done. Over the past couple of years, he has realised that the digital aspect is really the work and that the painting side of it didn’t always need to exist in the final piece anymore.
“When you look at it closely, you realise that there are photos of canvases, and things that I’ve used on there are all enlarged. The scale of the weave of the canvas you’re looking at is fake because it’s also printed on canvas – there’s just multiple levels of illusion happening, which is kind of what I’m playing with. If you look at them across the room, you may not know that, but I don’t really think of them as paintings anymore. I don’t really know what they are – it’s up to someone else to try and figure that out.”
You can stay up-to-date with Marc’s work and what’s upcoming at Broker Gallery at brokergalleries.com
