Efforts raise $25k for surf life-saving clubs /  by Sam Foley

The donated print ‘Cycleway’ was one of the items auctioned at the Oyster Bash and raised $1950.

The donated print ‘Cycleway’ was one of the items auctioned at the Oyster Bash and raised $1950.

Five Otago surf life-saving clubs will soon receive important equipment and related funds, thanks to a $25,000 donation by a Dunedin business.

The Harbour Fish  "Oyster Bash" and an associated auction at Vault 21 restaurant in the Octagon, in mid-March,  helped raise funds for the  St Clair, St Kilda, Brighton, Warrington and Kaka Point clubs.

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Selected Finalist for The 29th Wallace Art Awards - Travelling Show /  by Sam Foley

Car park off George Street, oil on canvas, 150 x 110cm

Car park off George Street, oil on canvas, 150 x 110cm

For the 8th year now, Sam Foley has been a selected finalist for this important competition and traveling exhibition, featuring prominently on the NZ Arts calendar.

‘This is an oil on canvas painting depicting graffiti on a sun-baked concrete wall. The graffiti shown is not particularly elegant, significant or in any way beautiful. However, the painting itself is well executed, photographic in its portrayal with the surface pleasingly textured. The sun shines but the invitation to enter the space ends there. A perspective that creates depth to draw a viewer into the scene is absent. It is a dead-end of composition. There is no obvious way out, only the hinted shadow of a nearby tree, possibly leading to greener pastures. There is also the intimated violence of private/public property willfully damaged by the act. A tension is created between a beautifully rendered but mostly mundane, even ugly scene. Look away... but do look back.’

Sam Foley , July 2020

Exhibition dates -

Wallace Arts Centre, Pah Homestead
15 September – 15th November.
(The Salon des Refusés  finishes on Oct 25th)

Pātaka Art+Museum
Official opening Sunday 6th of December, ending Sunday 28 February 2021.

Wallace Gallery Morrinsville
March – May 2021.

Selected finalist for the 27th Annual Wallace Art Awards /  by Sam Foley

All your hopes and fears will be realised (Club de Visionaere, Fluchtgraben, Berlin)

Moving Image Painting, 170 x 100cm

For the 7th year now, Sam Foley has been a selected finalist for this important competition and traveling exhibition, featuring prominently on the NZ Arts calendar. 

The Exhibition of Winners and Selected Finalists will then travel on to Pātaka, in Porirua, where it will be shown from the 16th of December 2018 – the 24th of March 2019.  After this the Exhibition will travel to the Suter Art Gallery in Nelson, COCA in Christchurch and then back to the Wallace Gallery, Morrinsville.

Painting Bohemian Precinct, Otago Daily Times, 2/11/17 /  by Sam Foley

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Article frament - click here for full article

Living and working in Dowling St for more than 15 years has inspired Dunedin artist Sam Foley to capture the environment on canvas, he tells Rebecca Fox.

Standing on the deck of Sam Foley's warehouse apartment in Dowling St, it's not hard to see where he gets his inspiration from.

A glance down a nearby void reveals the red brick wall covered in ivy featured in Alley (back of Milford House). Look over the rooftops and you see the tower looming in Periscope Up (back of Tower House).

It is views like those and ones he sees every day that led him to create his latest exhibition, ''Dowling Street''.

''I've been thinking about it for a long time and I've painted a few locations in and around here before.''