The Renderers Live at Maryrose Crook’s Nigredo

The Renderers
Perform Live at Maryrose Crook’s Nigredo Opening!
Friday, August 5, 2016
8PM 

“Part Velvets, part Mekons, part unalloyed, indescribable weirdness…”— Elizabeth Nelson, Washington Post.

The Renderers have been making music since 1989 playing in various incarnations with rotating members, with partners Brian and Maryrose Crook being the mainstays of the group. Described as deep, dark and psychedelic, the Renderers music ranges from wild and raging to dreamlike and spooky. The Crooks have supported such artists as Thurston Moore, playing with a full band to a packed New York audience; to Joanna Newsom, and Bill Callahan, who they supported in New Zealand, playing theatre shows as a duo, to Simon Joyner and Wooden Wand, who they recently supported in a house concert in Yucca Valley, California. The Renderers have released nine albums on such labels as New Zealand’s Flying Nun (New Zealand) and Merge (USA).

Maryrose Crook is a self-taught New Zealand artist drawing on traditions of surrealism, still life and folk art creating worlds where beauty and brutality exist in close proximity; and a musician, performing and recording along with husband Brian Crook, as The Renderers. Maryrose has been exhibiting in public and private spaces since 1996, and has work held in collections in New Zealand, the USA, Germany and Australia. She has been the recipient of the Wallace Development Award, one of New Zealand’s most prestigious art awards, and has undertaken numerous artist residencies. She is currently based in Joshua Tree, California, in the Mojave Desert.

“Maryrose Crook’s paintings are obsessively rendered and hypnotic to behold, ineluctably drawing the viewer into dreamlike narratives that promise to reveal their mysteries, which of course they never do… Flowers, birds and bees, luxurious fabrics, unsettling still lifes with fresh meats and strands of pearls — art historical in a very specific, proto-modern kind of way that prefigured Pop Surrealism centuries hence, yet retaining a classically refined palette and single-hair delicacy in its luminosity. In Crook’s lavish beauty and lurking death, nostalgia, faith, and anguish all collude to render the world as a psychological matter.” – Shana Nys Dambrot, Huffington Post

Space is limited, so be sure to RSVP by email at info@laluzdejesus.com.