Exhibitions

Auckland

Hugo Koha Lindsay But will it float

Gow Langsford Gallery 21 March–14 April LUCINDA BENNETT I visited Hugo Koha Lindsay’s exhibition just after the storm that swept through Tamaki Makaurau in early April. There had been strange pink flashes in the sky that weren’t lightning, but were caused by fallen power lines sparking. A huge tree on the street next to mine was blown over; I walked past it the next morning to see its sprawling roots unearthed, pointing up to the sky. The road was criss-crossed with dead palm fronds.

Lindsay’s paintings are about the city. They combine the slickness of corporate architecture and gentrified districts with those parts that serve utilitarian functions such as road markings, temporary barriers and scaffolding. But they also include grubby, organic elements such as the vestiges of wild weather and so much human residue. Wet asphalt littered with debris. Tyre skid marks on the smooth concrete floor of a multi-storey carpark. A stainless-steel handrail patterned with the fingerprints of a thousand strangers keeping their balance. The works that make up do not so much speak about our built environment but rather to the ways we experience it: to the feeling of being physically close to others but not touching, of being familiar with spaces we have