Kamini Nair : A solo exhibition of new work

Laree Payne Gallery is delighted to present a new body of paintings on paper by Kirikiriroa based artist, Kamini Nair. The self-titled exhibition is the artists first solo presentation with the gallery following participation in a group exhibition in 2019.

Born in 1953 in Fiji, Kamini has always favoured flowers within her practice, most likely inspired by a sense of nostalgia toward her home country. Flow/er (readable by clicking the link), a poem by essa may ranapiri written in response to Kamini's paintings, describes Kamini’s “…stumble of overlapping pigments…”. That is indeed how Kamini’s colour works; purple trips on pink, slips on white, falls into a pit of black. Across her oeuvre of more than fifty years, no hue remains untouched across arrangements of blooms, buds, seed pods and grasses.

Kamini’s delight isn’t only reserved for colour, a vast energy is also apparent in her approach to paint application. Working with a brush and using acrylics, Kamini’s pictures are built using short, singular, repetitive gestures that begin at any point on the page and navigate outward. Often working with a stiff brush, her marks appear finger like, unfussy and expressive. These cumulative, travelling gestures create a sense of movement throughout each painting and a sense of growth is achieved, or the feeling of wind, or some other dynamic motion.

Kamini Nair is a self-taught artist who attends Sandz Gallery, a studio in Kirikiriroa for artists with intellectual disabilities. The Gallery extends special thanks to Maree Glass at Sandz Gallery as well as Creative Community Scheme Funding without whom the exhibition would not have been possible.