Painted directly to the Gallery wall an eccentric assortment of organic forms hover inside a rectangular grid structure. Presented as specimens in the process of being classified, these ‘blob-like’ shapes are what Braunias refers to as “archaeological pop morphism.”

Braunias has long been interested in the notion of de-evolution, where biology is seemingly heading in the reverse direction, perhaps somewhere in a distant future Darwinism is cross fertilized with Walt Disney and the resulting hybrids resemble these biomorphic cartoons.

Forms in the process of forming.

Mark Braunias was born in Tauranga and now lives and works in the small coastal village of Kawhia. He studied at the Canterbury School of Fine Arts in Christchurch, graduating in 1987 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

He was the inaugural winner of the prestigious Wallace Art Award in 1992 and his work is held in major public and private collections in New Zealand and overseas.

Braunias is a well-recognised contemporary painter, and is known for his energetic, irreverent and witty visual language.

In 2010, Braunias was awarded a Fulbright/Wallace scholarship to take up a residency at the Headlands Centre for the arts in San Francisco.