Artists Statement

Working on this series of images has been a process of coming to know and balancing different aspects of myself: the intertwining of personal history with the present, wants for the future and the daily sensation of living as a physical being.

The structures, rooms and passageways are combinations of my past and present places of dwelling, combined with spaces only visited in dreams. All these places I have lived still exist in me and contain the life that I lived there. Frequently in dreams I will find myself in buildings that seamlessly contain rooms from my childhood home in Denmark and my current flat in Dunedin.

The fish and the dogs are the organic and animal presences in our lives, including the emotions and energies inherent in our bodies, the animals we eat and the pets we share our lives with. The soft darkness is the creative space from which the light springs and illuminates the hallways, rooms and passageways from any direction possible.

Exhibition notes from the joint show of Olav Nielsen and John Mitchell October 2004.
Exhibition notes written by Rick Norris.

Where mist curls at the edges of consciousness and sound whispers in silent landscapes, there, at that place in common, begin the divergent stylistic paths of Oamaru artist John Mitchell and Dunedin printmaker Olav Nielsen.

Thus works which seem so different in medium, style and theme are not so unconnected after all: there is much common ground. Both in Mitchell's exquisitely executed pencil work and Nielsen's technical mastery of the burnishing tool we see craftsmanship, meticulous attention to detail, total control of method. Each artist might work through his own compositional scheme and express with a distinctive voice his own message, yet the complementary nature of these works remain.

Olav Nielsen

In this, his second exhibition of burnished aquatints at the Peter Rae gallery, Nielsen presents a new body of work, further developing the theme of exploration of the subconscious. As in his previous showing at the Stuart Street premises, Nielsen takes hold of images which emerge "at the threshold of consciousness", from dreams and inklings of reality which form in place just out of sight of the conscious eye: the intermeshed workings of the subconscious and the rational mind. And into these elusive substances he melds real life images such as buildings or places he has lived to form his symbol rich multilayered compositions, masterly executed in the burnished aquatint medium. When one considers that these images are drawings which are formed by carving into zinc plate with the burnishing tool, one can appreciate the technical skill involved in even producing the ground on which Nielsen begins the colouring and printing process.

"I feel I have come a long way since the last exhibition, both in the technical and the conceptual aspects", says Nielsen. "This time I'm working more strongly with light, and more particularly with the intersections of light in the images. They represent the moment of realization, creating a point of light in the shadows". Olav Nielsen was born in Denmark in 1978. He studied at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art from 1997-2000, graduating BFA in printmaking. In 2003 he gained second place at the Mainland Art Awards and in 2004 was first equal in the Fortune theatre Art Awards.