Biography
Iain Cheesman was born in the United Kingdom but now lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand. He has an MFA (2009) from Elam School of Fine Arts (University of Auckland; and a BFA (2002) from Otago Polytechnic School of Art. He has exhibited in solo shows since 2003 including The Scholar Official (Gow Langsford Gallery, 2012); Needy (FHE Galleries, 2011); An Automatic Welcome (The Physics Room, 2004) and Contact (Blue Oyster Gallery, 2004). His work has been included in group shows including WORD (Gow Langsford Gallery, 2011); The System is Nervous (George Fraser Gallery, 2009) and Follow the White Rabbit (Artspace, 2003). His work is held in private collections throughout New Zealand and in selected public collections including the Wallace Arts Trust collection, the Hocken Collection (University of Otago) and the Otago Polytechnic School of Art in Dunedin.
Iain Cheesman is a maker of objects and ‘things’. Works are often aspects of sculpture and painting combined - or of painting and photography combined.
A common theme throughout the work is that of fragility and temporality. Their potential is to register as both objects caught in the state of construction, and respectively of deconstruction. Linkages appear between form, time and place.
Thematically the work has addressed notions of losses and gains at different formal and material levels. The processes of entropy are always in the background - the realities of organisational failure, and loss of energy or more initially of form.
They are also ‘try-hards’….the ugly attempting to be beautiful, or the something trying to be someone.