Lost For Words: Mervyn Williams: From Modernism to the Digital Age

5 September – 1 November 2014

This 50-year survey of the career of senior New Zealand artist, Mervyn Williams, who was born in 1940, was organised to coincide with the launch of the Ron Sang publication of the same name. Carefully curated by Ed Hanfling, the exhibition focused on three phases: the Op Art-inspired paintings of the 1960s and 1970s which earned the artist the epithet ‘Optic Merv’; the textured paint surfaces of the 1980s, known as ‘the crusties’ which create the illusion of light and shadow across the surface and which segued into relief works made of driftwood washed up the Whanganui River, and finally the monochromes of the 1990s where trompe l’oeil techniques combine with illusionistic abstraction.

View the full range of images from the exhibition on Artsdiary. Images on this site have been reproduced with permission from the artist.