Artist Matthew Couper Soaking it up in Sin City for the Canvas

GISBOURNE HERALD
By Kristine Walsh

New works by Matthew Couper exploring sin in Vegas

NEW ZEALAND---Seeking inspiration for his religion-infused paintings, Matthew Couper went to the heart of Sin City. There, he worked under the most devilish glow of any along the whoring, gambling streak of Las Vegas’s Sunset Boulevard. Couper’s studio-cum-apartment lurks in the shadow of the Stratosphere Tower . . . a soaring example of excess in a city defined by its excesses. And there, he says, he found what he was looking for. While his work explores the anxieties around modern life, his practice borders on the antiquated — good old-fashioned paint applied to create Couper’s own interpretation of sacred-style art in a world that humans insist on destroying, and where greed is not just “good”, it is “god”. [link]


In conjunction with tomorrow’s opening of Matt Couper’s exhibition "The Whaling and Naching of Teeth" (PaulNache gallery, 6pm), Hawke’s Bay sculptor Ben Pearce will be in town to launch a new collection of his own intriguing, treehouse-like constructions.