Contemporary New Zealand artist Ben Buchanan spent five years during his youth in Masterton, returning in October to create a new installation for the Windows gallery. He has just completed a major residency in India. The site-specific installation he is conceiving for Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History is a continuation of "Forever" which was first exhibited at the Dowse in 2012. Later that year he did a version of it in Beijing, China for Beijing international design week, with this being part III. Invited to coincide with Milan Mrkusich’s ‘Chromatic Investigations and Paintings from the 90s,’ Buchanan considers his practice a "hyper modern" extension of modernist aesthetics.
Dowse installation, 2012, photographed by John Lake
“Ben Buchanan’s ongoing project "FOREVER(S)" is based on a system of using strips of adhesive vinyl applied directly to the gallery wall creating an immersive and pulsating effect. The work shifts through scale and context, from the intimate to the monumental from the Museum space to a hutong in downtown Beijing. Forever is about spending time in a space and making a direct response to it, an interuption to the white wall, suggesting something that continues on beyond the gallery."