Buddhism, crucifixes and rock ‘n’ roll

Some of Nell’s earliest memories include going to a traditional baptist church in rural New South Wales alongside local rock fans sporting ripped jeans and AC/DC shirts. 

These memories have become part of her first solo New Zealand exhibition, Words + Crosses. 

The strawberry blonde, 42-year-old hasn’t had a last name since she was in art school about 20 years ago and had it legally removed. 

Now she is simply known as Nell, the Artist. 

Nell’s exhibition at Wintec’s RAMP gallery in Hamilton features walls crammed with paintings and words ranging from “Disco” to “Mother” to “Unclassifiable”.

“When you make art you want to make space for people to have their own responses which could be on any human spectrum imaginable,”Nell says. 

“The paintings are ostensibly about a man’s journey. So it’s a mixture of the Rocky Horror picture show and Colin McCahon and Star Wars.”

In the next room 550 hand made crucifixes hang from the bare white walls. Nell has fashioned them from miscellaneous objects such as paint brushes, glitter covered sticks, pencils and scissors.  

“It’s about re-purposing these things for this installation.

“I want you to walk in and think that it’s a kind of crazy rock ‘n’ roll chapel where there’s some kind of ritual that might be going on or might have happened and you don’t quite know what it is.”

In the middle of the room, a body-less zen robe stitched from AC/DC shirts and dripping with bright Tibetan beads spreads its arms. 

The Buddhist, Sydney based artist was a guest speaker at the Spark International Festival of Music, Media, Arts & Design hosted by Wintec, where she also revealed her Words + Crosses exhibition. 

“There’s a lot going on here,” she says. 

“We’ve got a lot of popular culture, my love of music and AC/DC, love of music as a kind of buzzy spiritual experience mixed with Asian aesthetics. The robe, the Tibetan beads and the crucifixes which reference Christianity.

“Rock n roll aesthetics have taken a lot from Christian aesthetics so there’s a lot of skulls and roses and the fonts are really similar. There’s a real correlation between the aesthetics of the two.

“You got to churches in Europe and you see all the fonts and you see the skull on the ground. You’re like ‘wow this looks like a Metallica cover'”. 

Her art also features simple yet universally recognised motifs such as eggs and smiley faces. 

Nell describes herself as a “big time” fan of late, prominent New Zealand painter Colin McCahon. 

“When I was here a few years ago I walked from Auckland to Titirangi to his house which is something that he used to do when he was broke or drunk,” Nell says. 

“He [was] an incredible painter. I love his spiritual tussles which you see in the work. 

“He has inspired my work on lots of levels.”

Rock music, Christian motifs and Buddhism all form who she is. 

“It’s like your mum or your grandma say, the best thing you can be is yourself. I don’t know why it takes us so long to realise that,” Nell said during her live interview at Spark with director of Auckland Art Gallery, Rhana Devenport. 

“It’s just who I am.” 

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