Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery is thrilled to have recently welcomed Ella Sutherland’s Symposium 1 + 2 (2022) into Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection.

Sutherland’s practice is informed by her deep research into social histories of Modernist architecture and literature, as well as her lived experience as a queer female artist. Symposium 1 + 2 takes inspiration from the poetic potential of typographic letterforms as well as contemporary philosophies of digital media and communication. This work, with its bold colouration and vivid, undulating forms, felt particularly well suited to the campus environment. With reference to these art historical sources as well as graphic modes of address, Sutherland’s canvases manifest a tension between abstract patternation and partial representation.

Fittingly for the University the title of the painting is a reference to Plato’s Symposium (c. 385 – 370 BC), an ancient Greek text in which the philosopher depicts a series of speeches given by his peers at an Athenian banquet. In one of these, the playwright Aristophanes recounts the mythic origins of our search for a soulmate, in which Zeus, fearing that the powerful and physically perfect humans would rise against him, splits human beings in half: “Each of us, then, is a ‘matching half’ of a human whole … and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him.”

Symposium 1 + 2 will also feature on the University wall calendar for 2025.

Sutherland is represented by Sumer in Tāmaki Makaurau.