Southland artist Johanna Elizabeth Qiao Tong is exhibiting her work at Gore's Eastern Southland Gallery for the next three months. 

Movement, Stillness, Silence is her second solo exhibition at her hometown gallery, the first being back in 2012. 

The paintings and drawings reflect the interconnectedness of breath, heart and body, says New Zealand poet Michael Steven, who's written a piece for the exhibition. 

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Tong, who lives and works at the foot of the Rock and Pillar mountain range in Otago, is a committed practitioner of the Chinese meditative health practice Qigong.  

"Johanna’s drawings and paintings are themselves the meditative act, but they are also its outcome," Steven says.

"Movement, Stillness, Silence is the first show to constellate works from this luminous and idiosyncratic artist’s practice."

Becoming

Tong was born in Gore, in 1983. Her early childhood was spent in Waikoikoi before moving to live on other farms around the Otago and Strath Taieri regions. 

In 2001 she moved to Dunedin where she began to paint seriously. She has exhibited widely in group shows and solo exhibitions over the past 20 years. 

Marcella Geddes, Gallery Programmes Officer says: "The works reveal her ongoing exploration of form, figure and various states of being. 

"Overlapping and layered, figures and hand-forms, emerge and recede from the canvas, giving the works an energy and vitality." 

The exhibition runs until May 30, 2021. 

Admission free. Gallery hours: Monday to Friday 10am-4.30pm, Weekends and Public Holidays 1-4pm. Closed Good Friday. 

Encounter