Northland artist Scott McFarlane has enjoyed a longstanding professional relationship with Richard Parker and with the Whangarei Art Museum. His exhibition Parallel Bodies in 2002 curated by Scott Pothan was the first to showcase his ceramic painting works in collaboration with Richard Parker Studios in Kaeo.

Scott Pothan again invited the artist in 2011 to create a massive wall installation work for the new art museum and Rugby exhibition program in context with the Richard Parker: Master of Craft exhibition showing concurrently.

Zeitgeist will reconfigure over 400 handmade ceramic tiles into the word ‘ZEITGEIST’ spread across over 10 metres of wall space:

zeitgeist|ˈtsītˌgīst; ˈzīt-|

noun [in sing. ]

the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time : the story captured the zeitgeist of the late 1960s.

ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from German Zeitgeist, fromZeit ‘time’ +Geist ‘spirit.’

“The content of my latest ceramic paintings is drawn from a variety of sources- contemporary and historical. They are headlines, fragments of song lyrics and poetry, imaginative interpretations of local and global issues, popular and unpopular culture.”

Scott McFarlane  2011

For further information and images contact:

whangareiartmuseum@wdc.govt.nz or Ph. (09) 430 4240