Ruth Cleland

Our attention is focused on the banal details of modern spaces including car parks empty of people, malls and supermarkets in Ruth Cleland’s photorealist works. She contributes to a kind of contemporary archaeology, monumentalising the ordinary and incidental. But Cleland’s choice of subjects is by no means arbitrary, with much time and care invested in every piece.

Her new paintings represent sections of the terrazzo floor at her local supermarket. Every chip of agglomerate material and every nuance of light and shade, polish and wear are rendered with hyper realism. Strangely, this fidelity to life results in works which are appealing in their abstraction.

Cleland, who has a Master of Fine Arts, has won several major awards including the Park Lane Wallace Arts Trust Development Award and the NZ Painting and Printmaking Award.