Laurence Berry is fascinated by history, in previous exhibitions he has shown us his love for man’s imprint on the land, the recording of events, times and places. But how do we define individuality? Is it the loan footprint in the sand, or is it in the handprints our children leave in some oddly concreted step, or the marks pencilled in door jams year after growing year? What do we learn from history, are we part or separate from it’s making.

'The Road Home' is Laurence Berry giving us an act of imagination, longing and insight into his highly individual world. These are the handprints of a man telling us so much more than pencil marks of their beginnings.   

Laurence Berry was born in Wellington in 1958. He had his first exhibition in 1979 and has been exhibiting regularly in Auckland and other major centers since 1991.

In 2000 he was the subject of a Decade Survey exhibition at Whangarei Art Museum and in 2004 The Southland Museum curated and catalogued an exhibition of his work entitled ‘Te Ara o Takitimu -The Path of Takitimu’. His work is represented in private and public collections throughout the country.

He lives in Northland.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take met
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

From Fern Hill - Dylan Thomas