Under the Rose Karin Strachan

Under the Rose is a sculptural installation of new work by Karin Strachan consisting predominantly of cast resin pieces. Each work in the exhibition is loosely based on T.S. Eliot’s poem Burnt Norton, which Strachan reads using a hybrid codec of three ritualistic practices: buddhism, christianity, and art-making. Far from being illustrative of Eliot's work, Strachan uses the poem as a point of departure to explore transcendent ideas such as desire, beauty, and restlessness  - all of which are common to the three ostensibly disparate practices.

Burnt Norton, the first of Eliot's Four Quartets, is in many ways a development of his best-known work - The Waste Land - and alludes to a struggle in which the poet strives for a sense of communality and the universal against a climate of isolating subjectivism and individualism. Strachan's work raises the same great doubt within the context of an artistic practice - and offers no resolution - aside from the implicit direction to continue.

In connecting seemingly different philosophical beliefs, mystification and disruption of meaning occurs. This disruptive space between the different philosophies/practices demands a non-linear, poetic understanding and reveals a personal journey towards meaning making and significance.

Karin Strachan graduated from Quay School of Arts, Whanganui in 2008 and has been exhibiting nationally since 2006. She was a finalist in the National Contemporary Art Award in 2010.

Presented alongside Sian Torrington Caves are made of rock but not this cave and Deborah Crowe and Eldon Booth [Eddy]