Liquid States is the first survey in 20 years of the work of renowned Aotearoa New Zealand painter Gretchen Albrecht. Held across four gallery spaces, the exhibition includes paintings, watercolours, collages, and drawings produced in the 1970s and 1980s that illustrate the enduring conceptual and material significance of liquidity in Albrecht’s practice. The artist’s embrace of liquid media and applications in these formative decades is key to understanding the tussle between motion and stasis, articulation of nature, and fluid stylistic parameters that have come to characterise her work. 

Drawing inspiration from the diverse landscape of Titirangi, where Albrecht lived between 1964 and 1982, her 1970s stain paintings were a natural ingress for Liquid States. Departing from this series, the exhibition charts threads between the vivid, serene choreographies of these poured compositions and the gestural dynamism of works  produced throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including the 1971 Garden watercolours, 1975 plein-air watercolours of West Coast beaches, large-scale gouache and collage works and hemisphere paintings of the 1980s, and sinuous pastel drawings of the mid-1980s. Woven together, these ostensibly distinct bodies of work share in the fluid qualities of their compositions and making, enabled by Albrecht’s motive and sympathetic use of media.

This exhibition was made possible with the support of the Te Uru Benefactors Collective (TBC), Lopdell Trust and Two Rooms gallery.