Waiting Room: A solo exhibition by Hannah Ireland

Waiting Room is Hannah Ireland’s (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) second solo exhibition with the Gallery, following I’m just a spectator (2022). Waiting Room sees Ireland continue with their paintings on glass, this time with a reduced number of works which are larger in scale and increasingly pithy, with a focus on the idea of the threshold.

Aqueous and ethereal, Ireland’s figures are brought forwards only by the blackness that hangs behind them. This liminal backdrop situates the bodies in a lunar lit void space which is both clear and deep. The exhibition title, Waiting Room, affirms the paintings as depictions of a transitional space and for some, the paintings will call to mind our Māori creation story.

Throughout the body of work, Waiting Room seeds a sense of the elemental, conveyed through subject, medium and method. Rather than appearing as melancholic rumination’s, the works are instead pensive considerations of an in-between space. Notably, one cannot stand before a painting without seeing themselves reflected back in the blackness, Ireland ushers you in.