Geoff Dixon: Portraits Of Us
Documentary Film Screening

St James Theatre, Gore

- Saturday 19 July, 3pm

- Sunday 20 July, 3pm

- Tuesday 22 July, 10.30am

We are pleased to announce three special screenings of the 2022 film, Geoff Dixon: Portraits of Us, at the St James Theatre Gore on Saturday 19 July, Sunday 20 July, and Tuesday 22 July. 

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The documentary, which debuted at the 2022 NZ International Film Festival, features a series of portraits of Geoff Dixon which has just been shown at the Eastern Southland Gallery as part of Euan Macleod’s exhibition FLUX.

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Environmental issues and pop-culture collide in vibrant textural colours and forms in this intimate portrait of the life, loves and friendships of Aotearoa New Zealand artist Geoff Dixon.

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Glenis Giles and Clare O’Leary’s documentary invites us into the magnificently cluttered studio of Geoff Dixon as he prepares works for his next exhibition, transforming children’s toys and hard enamel paint into surreal collages of spacecraft and birdlife. Living in Cairns alongside his partner, Aboriginal artist, Arone Meeks, the Bluff-born Dixon has long held a fascination with endangered birds. Southland’s own takahē often feature prominently in his work alongside many other threatened species as a metaphor for the destruction of the natural world. 

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The film unravels Dixon’s past – growing up in Nelson and his formative years at art school in Christchurch where he met fellow artist Euan Macleod – dissecting his seemingly contradictory obsessions with science fiction, space travel, nature and extinction which have shaped his unique artistic style and vision. 

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His work is both confronting and celebratory, revelling in the marvellous splendour of the natural world while also mourning its seemingly inevitable loss; as he describes, the works are a “portrait of us” and an unnerving look into the future. 

I just started wanting to paint endangered birds, and yet they were hard to find in the nineties. You'd look them up and they're not endangered . . . but now, so much is in a critical situation environmentally, I can paint them all. That's how it all happened. That's why I became a bird person.  – Geoff Dixon

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For further information contact: 

Eastern Southland Gallery, Phone: 03 208 9907

Jim Geddes jgeddes@goredc.govt.nz  

Marcella Geddes mgeddes@goredc.govt.nz