Since starting at Māpura Studios five years ago, Tāmaki Makaurau based artist Avtar Singh (b.1967, Te Awamutu) has emassed an immense catalogue
of works. Singh’s predominantly drawing based practice is one of commitment and persistance. Often starting with printed media — magazines, cookbooks or art books — Singh embarks on a mission to translate these familiar, highly consumed images into her own visual language.

If you asked her though, Singh says “I just like to draw”. This enjoyment of the act of drawing is evident. In her process of translation, Singh follows the shapes and rhythms of the sources, but she does so with a natural looseness. Marks are made freely, often with bold, rich and vibrant colours. Her choice of drawing materials assist in conveying this sense of enjoyment and freedom. Primarily working in coloured pencil, crayon and oil pastel, proportions shift, forms tilt, and details emerge according to what catches her eye. Rather than aiming for strict accuracy, she lets the drawing unfold at the pace of her looking. This allows each composition to evolve intuitively, resulting in works that hold familiarity, while sitting firmly in her own vernacular.

Singh draws inspiration from a multitude of different sources, however we can see clear recurring threads of where she seeks her inspiration. Existing artworks, found either through google image searches or art books, have formed a distinct portion of her practice. She references artists such as Van Gogh and Picasso, as well as artists from a treasured book on outsider art. Cookbooks also serve as a source of artistic sustenance. Alongside illustrations of ingredients in her signature visual language, recipes are transcribed and recorded. Singh’s favoured source materials are National Geographic magazines. Sometimes she chooses individual pages or images to depict. Other times, she undertakes the laborious task of rebuilding entire publications through drawing. Every spread, photograph, headline and corner of layout is carried across meticulously, forming a growing archive of re-made books.

Not all of Singh’s practice is based on found media, she also draws inspiration directly from the world around her. It is within these works that we see her experiment more with materiality. Along with the familiar coloured pencil illustrations, Singh employs paint to describe how she interprets the world around her. Applied with the same looseness and freedom typical of her way of working, these scenes offer a slightly different weight and brightness to the rest of the works in her practice. Some of these pieces are explorations into the materiality of paint itself. Saturated stripes of colour and overlapping brush strokes on both paper and unstretched canvas show a willingness to branch out into different teritories.

Through Singh’s sustained, attentive process of translation, we are invited to consider the pace at which we view and consume these kinds of familiar images.Her works reveal the quiet determination involved in turning the everyday into something built slowly through colour, intuition, and a vibrant material sensibility.

Curated by Hōhua Thompson.