Exhibition Text-

Born in Aotearoa, Harry Mcalpine is an artist whose intriguing work merges elements of photography with fine charcoal drawing techniques. The nuanced figurative works he produces possess an unsettling and immersive photo-realism while depicting hyperbolic scenes that engender cognitive fallacies and a heightened sense of reality. Exploring the human story across time and through an absurdist lens that juxtaposes the present with concepts of evolutionary psychology and our unfurling relationship with technology, Mcalpine approaches his subjects with a deep sense of connection and concern, and a sensitivity to the way in which the current human condition sits at the confluence of so many crisis points. This new collection of larger drawings, the largest Mcalpine has produced, sees the artist following a number of threads, tracing ideas of connection and being in the present, while exploring scale as a way of engaging impact and response. He positions us to encounter life-size figures who echo our own fraught associations and experiences, imbuing them with a sense of our own complicated and absurd humanity.