EVENT: Bob Kerr: It Was the Fun of the World Exhibition

Above: Before I was Twelve Years of Age by Bob Kerr, Oil on board, 120x60cm.

High respected artist and illustrator Bob Kerr has a new exhibition of paintings, It Was the Fun of the World, on now at Whitespace Gallery in Ponsonby Auckland. Kerr will also be familiar to local comics readers as the artist and co-creator of the Terry Teo graphic novel series (with the Terry Teo and the Gunrunners coming back into print soon), and another new graphic novel to be released in September, Changing Times.

Above: Not What I Expected by Bob Kerr, Oil on board, 37x20cm.

It Was the Fun of the World is a series of sequential paintings reflecting on the story of Tim Armstrong,  who was arrested for sedition in New Zealand in 1916 and who eventually became a Labour party politician. The painting images are based on passages from a letter Armstrong wrote to his children while serving his twelve month sentence in Lyttelton Prison. In the letter he outlines his life experiences leading up to his arrest, so that they might understand his actions.

Kerr's paintings are highly illustrative - you can see the keen eye of a sequential storyteller at work here, but he also communicate a great deal through texture and brushstrokes - implying a strong sense of movement and place to these experiences captured in oil.

It Was the Fun of the World is exhibited now till the 26th of September at Whitespace Gallery, 12 Crummer Road, Ponsonby, Auckland. The paintings are available to purchase, and the gallery is open Tues - Friday: 11am-5pm, and Sat: 11am-4pm. You can visit the Whitespace website for more information HERE.

- AK!

Above: I Worked in the Flax Milling Industry by Bob Kerr, Oil on board, 40x40cm.