EION STEVENS Stage set (for a poem by Ian Wedde) 2001. Oil on board. Courtesy of the artist.
EION STEVENS At the Gun Club 1984. Oil on board. Courtesy of the artist.
EION STEVENS Wind claw 2004. Oil on board. Courtesy of the artist.
EION STEVENS Playing God 2006. Oil on board. Courtesy of the artist.
Eion Stevens
A Stage Set for a Poem
8 December 2007 - 24 February 2008
For Dunedin-born artist Eion Stevens, a painting is but a stage; a stage for a cast of characters, props and life-inspired scenarios. On that stage Stevens hints at and plays with story ideas in the same way poets do in their poems. And like poems, these painted shows captivate, tease and bemuse us.
In A Stage Set for a Poem, an exhibition to accompany the newly released book Painted Poems, the suggestiveness and playfulness of Stevens’ paintings are combined with that of poems by twenty New Zealand poets. Painted objects and words collude and collide to create a kind of theatre in our own minds as we follow our own script, choose our own characters and create our own story.
View the exhibition labels — click here