Local artist lays his head

COLIN SMITH

AT HOME: Nic Foster with Nelson Hills from his exhibition Locale at Catchment Gallery.

Relevant offers

Arts

Garden a rich source of material for eco-artist Fresh garden hues show in ceramics Taking a colourful journey to a good place over the hill Homesick artist renews spiritual connections Creative journey begins for NMIT award winner At last, Che's art fills the Riverside Cafe's gap Artists celebrate Tasman Four exhibits in one at Refinery Met breathes new life into Gounod's opera Fab fascination continues

Home is where the heart is, at least so it's said. Charlie Anderson talks to artist Nic Foster about what home means to him.

Don't intellectualise Nic Foster's work. It is just depictions of the things he has been thinking about.

He thinks a lot about things which have caught his interest and things he finds interesting.

For example, Foster finds it interesting that he has lived in Nelson for eight years.

Some might still not see him as a "real" local but after eight years he feels comfortable here.

Foster thinks too many people put too much emphasis on what it means to be local.

Home is just where you lay your head. So Foster has done just that – six of his most recent paintings from his exhibition Locale are painted directly on bed heads. The artist is reluctant to share where one finds so many discarded, lonely bed components.

"I am just a forager," he says. And he loves to forage in Nelson.

"I have strong affiliation with this region; I love the energy that flows around it, the sun, the rain, the walks you go on."

Foster is like a Nelson information centre: "The other one that isn't next to Burger King."

A locale is a place where something happens, not where someone necessarily is. So the question Foster has been playing with is "what does it mean to be local?" And really, does that even matter?

"I think it's possibly the place where you are most happiest. But it's interesting how comfortable you get with your surroundings."

One of Foster's larger pieces attest to that comfort. Nelson Hills depicts the hills which hug the city, displayed on four bed heads, side by side.

But you still get the feeling he is not so sure of his place. Where's my Maunga? asks another piece. Where is Nic Foster's mountain? Where does he feel connected to? He has lived in Canterbury, England, North Otago and now Nelson. Foster's mountain seems to move around.

He likes to paint on domestic, functional products – a bed head, a door, a cupboard. "I just see things and say `I like that cupboard door, I'm going to do something with that'."

The result in that case was Cave Drawings Takaka Hill. "I like the idea of cave dwellers' art, and thinking `did they have issues about belonging to that cave?' You know, stuff that might not make any sense to anybody else."

People don't have a sense of belonging to caves anymore but we now seem to have a certain attachment to the types of things Foster chooses to use as his canvases.

Throughout his questioning and the things he thinks about, Foster still likes to remain true to what he knows – landscapes. He believes in a painterly tradition but he likes to use that in different ways. "Other people use landscapes to say quite literal things, like `here is a landscape' but my interpretation of it is that they can say much more."

In every show Foster likes to put in a piece which is a little bit different. Tripellypse is that.

In his last show it was an angel flying over French Pass with blood dripping from it. But in this show it is three oval shaped pregnancy tests. They too speak of identity, locality and the comfort Foster seeks and maybe the comfort he's had all along.

"Some people have their mountains, but for me, being here now, I feel totally at home."

• Locale by Nick Foster at Catchment Gallery, Hardy St, until October 31.

- © Fairfax NZ News