Environmental issues and pop-culture collide in vibrant textural colours and forms in this intimate portrait of the life, loves and friendships of Aotearoa New Zealand artist Geoff Dixon.
What are we doing to our natural world and when are we going to wake up?
Geoff Dixon: Portraits of Us 2022
Glenis Giles and Clare O’Leary’s documentary invites us into the magnificently cluttered studio of Aotearoa New Zealand artist Geoff Dixon as he prepares works for his next exhibition, transforming children’s toys and hard enamel paint into surreal collages of spacecraft and birdlife. Living in Cairns alongside his partner, Aboriginal artist, Arone Meeks, the Bluff-born Dixon has long held a fascination with endangered birds. Southland’s own takahē often feature prominently in his work alongside many other threatened species as a metaphor for the destruction of the natural world.
The film unravels Dixon’s past – growing up in Nelson and his formative years at art school in Christchurch where he met fellow artist Euan Macleod – dissecting his seemingly contradictory obsessions with science fiction, space travel, nature and extinction which have shaped his unique artistic style and vision.
His work is both confronting and celebratory, revelling in the marvellous splendour of the natural world while also mourning its seemingly inevitable loss; as he describes, the works are a “portrait of us” and an unnerving look into the future.