Time is never neutral in the work of Brenda Nightingale. It presses, lingers, escapes. In Fugitives, her latest exhibition at Sanderson, the Ōtautahi Christchurch–based painter turns abstraction into a meditation on presence, and its inevitable disappearance.
Nightingale’s practice is deeply rooted in place and repetition. A graduate of the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, with both a Bachelor’s and Master of Fine Arts, she has spent decades teaching and shaping emerging artists across Aotearoa, most recently as Head of Department at Hagley College. That discipline, of looking, returning, reworking, underpins the intensity of these new large-scale canvases.
acrylic on canvas, 850 x 600 mm
Fugitives draws conceptual strength from the writing of New Zealand poet Ursula Bethell, whose reflections on time and presence were shaped by solitary hours gardening on the Cashmere Hills. More than 70 years later, in the same landscape, Nightingale responds not with words but with gesture. Paint is layered urgently, worked and reworked, carrying what she describes as “the burden of time’s omnipresence”.
Across the exhibition, a dog appears and disappears, half-seen, half-remembered. Is it a memory, a premonition, or simply a trace left behind? Through Nightingale’s push and pull between figuration and abstraction, the animal becomes a fugitive marker of movement, anchoring the work in lived experience while refusing narrative certainty. It is a reminder that time cannot be held, only briefly noticed.
Nightingale’s work sits in major public and private collections, including Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū and The Fletcher Trust Collection. She is also known for her artist’s books, including Christchurch Hills 2010–2012, produced in the aftermath of the city’s earthquakes. Today, she lives, paints, and gardens in Diamond Harbour, continuing a practice grounded in observation, labour, and quiet persistence.
Fugitives is not a loud exhibition. It is patient, restless, and deeply felt, asking viewers to consider not just what they see, but when they are seeing it.
Exhibition opening:
Wednesday, 4th February, 5.30 – 7 pm
