Simon Ingram and Frances Hodgkins

On Saturday 13 June, two new exhibitions will open at Dunedin Public Art Gallery: Panorama – An expanded view of Frances Hodgkins and Simon Ingram – painting from Frances Hodgkins’ latent space.

Panorama brings together works from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery collection by Frances Hodgkins, her contemporaries, and other artists working in Europe and the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early to mid-20th centuries. Traversing subjects that frequently appear in Hodgkins’ works – from rural landscapes, to port and harbour scenes, to portraits and views of the interior – the exhibition widens the view of Hodgkins' international context. Panorama includes works by Paul Signac, Patrick Hayman, Maurice Sochachewsky, Vanessa Bell and more.

Sitting in the adjacent gallery, Simon Ingram brokers a visual dialogue with the work of Frances Hodgkins, while continuing a painting and technology-based enquiry that has informed his practice over time. In Pictorial fictions – painting from Frances Hodgkins' latent space, Ingram has customised and trained a machine learning tool on nineteen works by Frances Hodgkins held in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery collection including Ibiza Harbour (c.1933), Through the Trees (1932), and The Farmer's Daughter (1929–30), several of which are displayed in the adjacent exhibition Panorama. From there, Ingram has produced fictional Hodgkins-like compositions, segmented them into distinct chromatic zones, and interpreted them as paintings in a slow and deliberate method.

Please join us at the Gallery on Saturday 13 June at 11am, as Simon Ingram discusses the ideas, processes, and outcomes in Pictorial fictions – painting from Frances Hodgkins' latent space.

Noho ora mai
Lauren Gutsell
Kairauhī Curator
Dunedin Public Art Gallery

[above: Simon Ingram Interiors and portraits (006) 2026 (detail). Oil on masonite. Courtesy of Gow Langsford Gallery]
[below: Frances Hodgkins Ibiza Harbour c.1933. Oil on canvas. Collection Dunedin Public Art Gallery]