Nigel Brown- “Long recognised as an expert on “we Pākehā” and what makes us tick, Nigel Brown has been described as a “magpie”. And so it is in this exhibition, ‘Cells of Human’. As in so many other of his exhibitions, he not only draws on a wide range of genres and colours, but focuses on the boundaries we create to manage our world. Film, literature, comics, pop art, occasional echoes of Māori design – all are grist to his mill. He also cross-references himself and others, re-investigates, and revisits, conscious always of the complicated relationship between words, the things they purport to describe, and the visual world of planes, colours and dimensions. Sign, signified, and signifier are interrogated together. He has always been interested in change both in our world and in the past, which is how I first became interested in his work. In this exhibition change is at the forefront.
