Jhana Millers Gallery company logo
Jhana Millers Gallery
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Video
  • Viewing rooms
  • Contact
  • Store
Cart
0 items NZD$
Checkout

Item added to cart

View cart & checkout
Continue shopping
Menu

Ruby Wilkinson, Sun Room

Past exhibition
18 August - 10 September 2022
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • Works
  • Press release
  • Video
  • Related content
Overview
Ruby Wilkinson Sun Room Jhana Millers Gallery

 

“I have relaized that my studio doesn't let in much sunlight—this giving an explanation as to why I can't stop painting in yellow. I am simply trying to paint the sun"

Ruby Wilkinson Monday 2 May 2022

Ruby Wilkinson’s first solo exhibition with Jhana Millers Gallery ‘Sun room’ is an ode to heliophiles: sunseeking somethings and someones. Ruby's once-saturnine hues — dark browns and deep reds — have gradually given way to tones lighter, more ebullient in character: forest greens, light browns and golden-yellows, the last of which make several of her paintings appear to glow from within. 

Ruby views these new paintings as an orchestra, an ensemble of feeling. This ensemble of feeling, owes as much to shifts in colour as it does to her painterly gestures, now more open and freer than in previous bodies of work. The older forms of the last few years have loosened to the point of formlessness, giving these new paintings an irrepressible immediacy and spontaneity. Some consist of wisps of overlapping brushstrokes, others slanting swirls or open shapes resembling the letter D; all have been made using the artist’s favourite brush, now worn down to a bristly nub.

Ruby is a recent Fine Arts graduate from Massey University, Wellington and won the New Zealand Paint and Printmaking Award earlier in 2022. Her exhibition will be accompanied by a text from Tendai Mutambu and a video by Fraser Walker.

Installation Views
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhanamillersartgallerywellington Rubywilkinson Sunroom 8
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Jhana Millers Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson

Ruby Wilkinson 

Sun Room 

Ruby in her studio

Works
  • Ruby Wilkinson, It will not cease, 2022
    Ruby Wilkinson, It will not cease, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, Mo(u)rning swim, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, Mountain fringe, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, One hundred and seventeen and a half, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson, Orchestra, 2022
    Ruby Wilkinson, Orchestra, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson, Orchestra 2, 2022
    Ruby Wilkinson, Orchestra 2, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, Orchestra 3, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, Rabbit in Green, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, Road Runner, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, This current inside of me, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, Stars 4x4, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, Spring listener, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, Sports Star, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, Forrest Bathing, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington
    Ruby Wilkinson, Sun Behind Cloud, 2022
  • Ruby Wilkinson Jhana Millers Art Gallery
    Ruby Wilkinson, Fire the one, 2022
Press release

Ruby Wilkinson
Sun Room
18 August – 10 September 2022

“I HAVE REALIZED THAT MY STUDIO DOESN’T LET IN MUCH SUNLIGHT — THIS GIVING AN EXPLANATION AS TO WHY I CAN’T STOP PAINTING IN YELLOW. I AM SIMPLY TRYING TO PAINT THE SUN.”

Ruby Wilkinson, Monday 2 May 2022

Ruby Wilkinson’s first solo exhibition with Jhana Millers Gallery, ‘Sun room’, is an ode to heliophiles: sun seeking somethings and someones. Ruby’s once-saturnine hues — dark browns and deep reds — have gradually given way to tones lighter, more ebullient in character: forest greens, light browns and golden-yellows, the last of which make several of her paintings appear to glow from within.

In ‘Marigold’, the lone, eponymous flower is rendered in delicately overlapping strands of deep yellow that skim the canvas’s edge. I imagine these painted lines — dense in parts, but mostly soft and feather-light — as a single thin ribbon that might unravel with a gentle tug, like a special sailor’s knot.

Similar to ‘Marigold’, ‘Sports Star’ leaves vast areas of canvas untouched, its jagged and
angular line counterposing the curvature of ‘Marigold’. While ‘Sports Star’ might recall a cartoonish, comic book explosion or crash, its provenance speaks to a more subdued mode of communication: namely the spirit fingers gesture which fans make at a basketball player shooting at the free-throw line. With this reference, Ruby shifts her attention to the realms of ritual practice and performance, as she does again with ‘Mo(u)rning swim’ — a work based on a personal act undertaken repeatedly by the artist in memoriam.

‘Mountain Fringe’ and ‘Spring Listener’— like ‘Marigold’ and ‘Sports Star’— might also be
seen as counterpoints to one another. One is dense with bright colour, crowned by a cluster of looping lines perched, like cursive lettering submerging or melting, on the landform rendered in a luminous yellow; the other consists of sparing touches of arching and circulating marks, which lend it a greater sense of immediacy and motion.

‘I LOVE THE FLUIDITY OF PAINTING AND HOW IT CAN ENGAGE WITH THE SENSATION OF MOVEMENTS’

Ruby Wilkinson, Monday 13th June 2022

The slanting, rounded shapes of ‘Road Runner’ mimic the frenzied circular blur beneath the titular cartoon bird in motion. The painted line repeats with shifting levels of density to give the impression of eyes going in and out of focus. And in their stretch across the canvas, these painted curlicues remind me of exercises in cursive.

‘One hundred and seventeen and a half’ comprises as many D-like shapes (or half-moons to invoke yet another celestial body) rendered in yellow paint on unprimed canvas, all of them slouching rightward at various angles. It has a similar effect to ‘This current inside of me’, a work whose overall composition also flits between line, shape and pattern; both shimmer and dance before the eye, which is made to dart restlessly across its irregular rhythms.

For Ruby, music has taken on the role of a guiding metaphor. She views these new paintings as an orchestra, an ensemble of feeling. And this ensemble of feeling owes as much to shifts in colour as it does to her painterly gestures, now less pictorial than in previous bodies of work. The older forms of the last few years have loosened to the point of formlessness, giving these new paintings an irrepressible spontaneity.

For the Anglo-American painter James Whistler (1834–1903 — who titled many of his paintings nocturnes, symphonies, harmonies, arrangements — there was a significant link between music and abstraction. Perhaps Ruby, who has named a trio of her latest works ‘Orchestra paintings’, is also reminding us how we might cast off the weight of representation and figuration by letting the emotional resonance of forms and gestures take precedence.

On the primacy of emotion and experience, Ruby brought to my attention, during our recent studio visit, the Japanese practice of forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku: a way of taking in nature through the senses, which, unlike exercising, has aimlessness at its heart. It is, as the artist remarked, an attempt at just being in nature and connecting. Almost immediately I thought of the ways in which so many of Ruby’s paintings, in all their fugitive and dynamic character, make us alert to the mercurialness of their form — which is to say, they make us present and acutely sensate, if only for a moment.

Tendai Mutambu, August 2022

Video
Related content
  • Jhana Millers now represents Ruby Wilkinson News

    Jhana Millers now represents Ruby Wilkinson

    Oct 21, 2022
    Jhana Millers is pleased to announce representation of Pōneke-based artist Ruby Wilkinson
    Read more
  • Ruby Wilkinson, Sun Room Videos

    Ruby Wilkinson, Sun Room

    Exhibition video Aug 29, 2022
    Read more
  • Press

    Ruby Wilkinson, Sun Room

    The Art Paper Aug 27, 2022
    Read more
  • Ruby Wilkinson, Sun Room Videos

    Ruby Wilkinson, Sun Room

    Exhibition teaser video Aug 17, 2022
    Read more

Related artist

  • Jhana Millers Art Gallery Wellington Ruby Wilkinson Runtime (Eddy) Artist

    Ruby Wilkinson

Back to exhibitions

Join our mailing list

Interests *

Signup
Jhana Millers
Whare Toi
Te Whanganui-
a-Tara
Address
Level 1, 85 Victoria Street, Te Aro
Te Whanganui-A-Tara, Wellington
 
Hours
Wednesday – Friday, 11am – 5pm
Saturday, 11am – 4pm
Directions
 
Contact
+64 4 471 1022
hi@jhanamillers.com
 
Social
Instagram
Facebook
Mailing List
 
Friends
Parrotdog Beer
Everyday Wines
The Exceptional Drop
Caughley
Yu Mei
Grafik
Profile Photos

 

Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Send an email
Join the mailing list
View on Google Maps
Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy
© 2025
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. 

Accept