If it Fits, Wear it, II

Joanna Fieldes and Fran Maguire

Claim to Clay II

5 November – 4 December 2011

Maori weapons, tea cups, doilies and jugs are a few aspects of the second take on Claim to Clay - a joint exhibition by Auckland based painter Joanna Fieldes and Marlborough ceramic artist Fran Maguire that was originally presented at the Auckland Botanic Gardens Visitor Centre in 2010.  This is a collaborative exhibition in which both artists use vessels to present work about New Zealand’s colonial past: Fieldes uses vessels within her oil paintings as a metaphor for interaction between imported and indigenous cultures, Maguire as guardians and carriers of culture and ritual.

Joanna Fieldes has established her reputation as a painter with a strong social conscience.  She articulates a form of storytelling through paint by juxtaposing the imported with the indigenous.  Using a rich imagination and strong painterly style, Joanna places traditional European domestic vessels in typical New Zealand landscapes.   Her colour palette is familiar and seductive to any New Zealander.   Joanna’s work points to the challenges that biculturalism presents.  There is a tension in her work which provokes question.

Fran Maguire is a well-known, award-winning ceramic artist who has worked with clay since the early 1990s.   Some of the ideas invested in this work are:  The migration and preservation of ritual and culture through domestic objects; the oddity of ornate Victorian vessels in an early New Zealand context; European flowers and New Zealand native insects; the connection to an ancestral past through domestic objects – the china cabinet; the privilege of art, the necessity of craft and compromise of materials.