Gretchen Albrecht’s practice is one of enduring tension between structure and flow. For over six decades, her work has continually redefined the boundaries of abstraction in Aotearoa New Zealand, engaging with the sensory and material possibilities of colour, form, and process. With Liquid States, her first survey in 20 years, on view now at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, audiences are invited to traverse the rich terrain of Albrecht’s early explorations and pivotal evolutions during the 1970s and 1980s.
Albrecht’s relationship with paint has always been instinctive, shaped by the physical landscapes she inhabits and the conceptual landscapes she imagines. Born in 1943 and educated at the Elam School of Fine Arts, her artistic roots extend back to the 1960s. But it was the subsequent decades—beginning with her transformative stain paintings—that truly marked her as one of New Zealand’s most innovative painters.
Liquidity, both as a physical property of her materials and as a conceptual force, permeates Albrecht’s oeuvre. Liquid States takes this as its guiding thread, presenting works that articulate the interplay of motion and stillness, immediacy and deliberation. At the heart of the exhibition are her 1970s stain paintings, created during her years in Titirangi, where the surrounding bush and coastal landscapes directly informed her practice. Works such as River Hymn (1970) demonstrate Albrecht’s mastery of poured paint as a method of embedding movement within the canvas. These compositions ripple, shift, and flow, echoing the natural world while existing firmly within the realm of abstraction. Nearby, her 1971 Garden Watercolours—delicate yet dynamic studies of Titirangi flora—underscore her early engagement with the elemental properties of liquid media. Rendered en plein air, these works capture the immediacy of observation but also hint at the fluidity that would come to define her larger-scale projects.
The 1980s saw Albrecht transition to her now-iconic hemispherical canvases, where the liquidity of her earlier works found a new form of containment. In Liquid States, works such as Crimson Fold (1982) and Azure Veil (1985) present colour as both a sensory experience and an intellectual proposition. These paintings, with their curved forms and saturated hues, create a sense of architectural space while retaining the visceral dynamism of her poured compositions. In Crimson Fold, the canvas curves upward, its reds and purples swelling like a tide contained within precise boundaries. The surface is alive, with subtle gradients and textures hinting at the movement beneath. Similarly, Azure Veil juxtaposes the serenity of its blue tones with the complexity of its layered application—each hue bleeding into the next with calculated spontaneity.
Liquid States also reveals threads between differing periods of Albrecht’s career, emphasising the continuity of her engagement with fluid media and form. The exhibition includes works like her 1975 plein-air watercolours of the West Coast beaches and the gestural gouache and collage works that followed. These pieces, often overlooked in favor of her larger-scale canvases, offer insight into her evolving relationship with gesture, composition, and medium.
One highlight is a suite of pastel drawings from the mid-1980s, where curvilinear forms intersect with rhythmic mark-making. In these works, Albrecht’s exploration of fluidity extends beyond the liquid state of her materials to encompass the very act of drawing itself—a dance between control and release.
Her earlier works, such as the Ovoid series, provide useful context for her current practice. These elliptical forms—predecessors to her hemispheres—marked her departure from traditional rectangular canvases, reflecting a desire to engage with spatiality on her own terms. By moving toward curved forms, Albrecht seems to embrace a certain dynamism, a freedom to let the canvas dictate its own gravitational pull. This interest in form is underscored by her use of negative space. The edges of her canvases are often as active as their centres, challenging the viewer’s tendency to locate meaning solely in focal points. In this way, her paintings become exercises in perception, asking us to reconsider the hierarchies we impose on what we see.
At the core of Albrecht’s practice is an almost stubborn commitment to painting as an intellectual and emotional act. In interviews, she has spoken of her process as one that requires both discipline and vulnerability. “Painting is my way of making sense of the world,” she once remarked, “but it’s also a way of holding onto things I don’t yet understand.” This tension—between control and surrender, knowledge and uncertainty—is palpable in her work.
It’s tempting to romanticise such statements, but Albrecht’s practice defies easy mythologising. Her paintings are not acts of catharsis so much as they are acts of construction. They are built, layer by layer, with a precision that belies their apparent spontaneity. Yet this very construction is what allows her to approach the ineffable. The finished work, though meticulously composed, retains a sense of openness, of possibility.
Critics often position Albrecht’s work within the broader lineage of modernist abstraction, noting her affinities with the colour-field painters the mid-20th century such as Rothko or Newman. But such comparisons, while tempting, fail to account for the specificity of her approach. Albrecht’s work is less concerned with the transcendental than with the tactile—how colour operates as both material and emotion, how the shape of a canvas can dictate the rhythm of viewing. Her paintings remain tethered to the earth—to the landscapes of Titirangi, the light over New Zealand’s beaches, and the rhythms of the natural world.
Her paintings are not about escape but engagement. In an interview with writer Warwick Brown, Albrecht reflected on the role of nature in her work, stating, “The land is always there, but it’s not a direct representation. It’s more a memory—a feeling that comes through the colours and the forms.”
Ultimately, Liquid States is a celebration of Albrecht’s ability to navigate the tensions between containment and expansion, control and spontaneity. It affirms her status as one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most important painters, while also offering new insights into the evolution of her practice. As a survey, Liquid States does more than retrace Albrecht’s early career; it situates her work within a broader conversation about abstraction, materiality, and the role of landscape in Aotearoa New Zealand art. The exhibition highlights her technical and conceptual rigour whilst inviting viewers to consider the relevance of her practice in contemporary terms.
Gretchen Albrecht’s latest exhibition, Liquid States, is on view at Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery until 2 February 2025.
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