This is Kiya Murman's second exhibition. The opening was distinguished by director Jan Hart's invitation to the artist to speak briefly about her work. Kiya's short, unassuming response was informative and enlightening, and was well-received by the audience, who despite reactions formed by prior individual encounter with the sculptures and paintings gracing the gallery, expressed an appreciation of the artist sharing with us her inspirations and intentions. It was a gentle exercise in demystification of the exhibition's title, and the artist's ideas, and thus informed, has a bearing on this review.

Kiya's quest in this body of work was to find ways of formally rendering in two and three-dimensional expression, her perception of  life which exists not singly, but in terms of multiplicities and layers, of which we as individuals are but one part. We may begin by seeing ourselves as single entities encountering existence, unaware of the various other life forms for which our bodies are the vehicle, yet in reality we are caught up in complex sets of intersections with these bodies and all those others in the world around us, a process more fluid and multiplicitous than we imagine.

Clearly, this view informs Kiya Murman's sculptures, which concern themselves with the tensions between formal mass and seductively smoothed surface as containing skin. Many of her sculptures, particularly the ovoid ones like the large, delicately balanced marble and granite Face, appear indeed to glow from within. Yet the veins on the satiny surfaces of these forms also create fields of activity and definition for the play of light. The smaller minimalist concave and convex Faces I & II, carved from buttery green serpentine, are wonderful examples of this 'vectoring' process also evident in the paintings placed nearby, All in Space, The Teaming Sky and Mood changes II.

To me, the artist's references here are more to the sculptural objects of early modernism than they are to an Oceanic tradition of greenstone carving attributable to her New Zealand origins, but perhaps both lines of influence apply.

We may be watching a wash of light across the surface or it may appear as the soft but clearly delineated shadows cast by carved bas reliefs, thereby creating another set of formal interruptions to the tension of the object's surface. Another set, albeit an illusory one but just enough to heighten our awareness, and to appeal by virtue of restraint. This is clearly evident in Kiya's more angular works such as the delightfully odd Big Present for You, and the series Fate and Destiny, I & II.

Despite the coolness of this work, I loved the feeling that I was sharing with the sculptor the tactile sensation of carving each particular type of stone. How could this be, given such finely polished surfaces, and such delicately poised pieces? I eagerly welcomed the artist's invitation to touch.

Although small in scale, worked and finished with great skill and care, these objects earn their definition as sculpture rather than carving because their interactions and exchanges with the surrounding space and its features are integral to the completion of their being. They are clearly not conceived as maquettes or scaled down versions of larger works, being perfect just as they are. Every piece succeeds in terms of the artist's intentions or efforts.

Speaking critically, my only observation is, that in one instance, the exquisite marble Moon Face, the relationship of sculpture to plinth is not quite right; but neither is it is too far wrong. Mostly, the match benefits the entire formal statement, and for me Kiya Murman's classically modernist sculptures with their Japanese and Oceanic overtones are a delight. They are the real strength of this show.

I am a little more reserved about her paintings. It is true that they clearly illustrate her expressed intentions, and that through them, we are following her in a transitional journey. Although this might have merit in the historic sense of a personal stylistic evolution, for me the journey becomes most important and most interesting when she abandons these sometimes clumsily composed figurative representation of humans and birds, and begins an intelligent and lively series of formal investigations in the realm of abstraction.

She proceeds from a single figure positioned as silhouette against gently pulsating, minimally partitioned space, to canvases bursting with many figures and a teeming space, and finally to paintings in which the entire surface becomes an optically active field of multiple geometrically mapped vectors. As these two-dimensional fields become more abstract, more densely linear, the painted surfaces become more interesting, more broken up into increasingly smaller planes of subtly shifting colour, more delicately worked.

 The artist does not draw our attention to paint as a solid, substantial material. Instead, unglazed, dry and faintly textured, the intersection of the face of her canvases with the surrounding air takes on a quality of robust smoothness akin to the surfaces of the stones she has carved, before their final polish, without in any way illustrating these. We begin to see certain similarities of concern and formal expression between these two arenas of practice.

Several of these works really take off, revealing an artist becoming suddenly cognizant and ever more confident with the world of the two-dimensional plane, and the essential elements of painting. In these paintings, the links between her two fields of expression become clear, and we can see and understand the rationale and dynamic for her quest.

It is exhilarating to see an artist opening up new and clearly rich stylistic territory to explore, especially early in their career.
If this is any indication, Kiya Murman's will be definitely one to watch.