We're delighted to be showing at the Aotearoa Art Fair 2024.
Exhibiting works by Nan Mulder, Jo Dalgety, Kyla Cresswell, Prue MacDougall, and Catherine Macdonald.
NAN MULDER
(…) And from the inside, too, I’d duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I’d let dark glass,
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land! (…)
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I’d let dark glass,
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land! (…)
Excerpt from Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov.
It is from this point, a poem reading in the middle of a cold Polish winter, that Nan Mulder started on a series of works in which the inside world became part of the outside one. Slowly, over time, this turned around and the outside word came inside. Thus the inner room started to use the outside world to reveal something of its hidden interior, full of memories, dreams and emotions.
Landscapes too have been a source of contemplation and wonder. Having lived for many years in Scotland and Ireland, and being a regular visitor and now resident of New Zealand, Nan slowly internalized parts of the natural world of these countries. This has helped to create visual allusions of that hidden place, and explore paths towards it.
Nan Mulders printmaking practice spans four decades. She has won many awards and was named International Mezzotint Ambassador, a title awarded at the IV International Mezzotint Festival, Russia. She received the Scottish Arts Council Award, Scotland and the Karel Klinkenberg Award for Art – The Hague, the Netherlands. Her works are held in over 30 public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt, National Library of Paris, France, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
JO DALGETY
Piako River, the emptying waters - is a small series inspired by research into Jo Dalgety’s childhood home, the Hauraki Plains.
A chance remark led to Jo delving into the history of the Hauraki Plains, going back much further than her great Grandfather’s arrival and knocking her ‘prosperous land for dairy farming’ narrative off its pedestal. Working with watercolour, charcoal, mono printing, and collage, Jo has begun a journey looking back into a land that once was. Her childhood home is being seen in challenging a new light.
‘Lost memories lie in the unconscious strata of mind itself, these dark, rarely disturbed layers that have accumulated, as mould accumulates in a forest, through the shedding of innumerable lives since the beginning of life.’ – Jacquetta Hawkes, ‘A Land’.
Jo Dalgety paints using layers of paper, each layer a representation of place, memory, personal history, all melting into the land and leaving marks. Underpinning her work is the hope or belief in nature, that the cycle of life will continue, and heal. That spring comes after winter.
She was a Walker & Hall Waiheke Art Award finalist 2023 and a Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Award finalist 2014. She is currently completing her MFA at Whitecliffe College.
PRUE MACDOUGALL
Prue MacDougall studied printmaking at the Elam School of Fine Art, University of Auckland. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with distinction in 1985 and was awarded the Auckland University Annual Prize of Excellence in Fine Arts in that same year.
Using the Intaglio printing process MacDougall creates wonderful whimsical tableaus. Her work draws its inspiration from the likes of Spanish artist Francisco Goya and the Portuguese printmaker Paula Rego. It's their application of chiaroscuro and theatrical drama as a means to evoke emotional response that primarily interests her.
There is a wonderful sense of other worlds in MacDougall's prints. A sense of overlapping time, it is if we are looking through a macro lens at hidden worlds rich in meaning and history. The body of work titled 'Navigating Worlds' uses 'The metaphors of body-as-map and world-as-body' Malcolm Burgess. Art New Zealand No 171 Spring 2019. Elements of the natural world seem to be ever present in MacDougall's work. They appear to act as an elemental force - sometimes conspiring, playing, resting, nudging us towards an idea that we are entwined in a world that despite our assumed dominance we do not control.
Prue MacDougalls prints are held in over 10 public collections, including the Wallace Collection, The Victoria and Albert Museum, print collection, London, UK, The National Art Gallery of Australia, Canberra print collection. AU. She is also a finalist the 2024 NZPPA awards.
CATHERINE MACDONALD
Catherine Macdonald was born in Whanganui. She studied Fine Arts at Wanganui Regional Polytechnic and graduated in 1997 with a BFA majoring in Printmaking.
In 1998 she was Community Artist in Residence for the Community Arts Council Wanganui and has taken up residencies in 1999 at Pompallier in Russell and 2017 at the Art Vault, Mildura, Australia. In 2003 Catherine was commissioned to design and hand print the cover for Real Life Bird Song published by Wai-te-Ata Press, V.U.W. In 2014 she produced the cover for a book of poetry by Airini Beautrais Dear Neil Roberts, published by VUP. Catherine has had articles published in Imprint, The Journal of the Print Council of Australia and Printmaking Today, UK. In 2001 she help to establish the Whanganui Artists Open Studios Event, working as a co-ordinator from 2001-2004, From 2004-2007 she was the Chairperson of the trust running this event. In 2002 she purchased a former church hall to convert into her studio, which she opens annually as part of the Open Studios Event.
She exhibits throughout New Zealand and her work is held in the public collections of the Sarjeant Gallery in New Zealand, State Library of Victoria and the Print Council of Australia and private collections in New Zealand, Australia and the UK.
Catherine Macdonald's work takes inspiration from her environment and its inhabitants, her drypoints capture everyday moments in time and the atmosphere around the experience. They are imbued with a sense of connection. Some of the inhabitants of her work we are aware of and notice, they on the other hand keep a wary eye on us.
KYLA CRESSWELL
Kyla Cresswell grew up in the south of New Zealand and studied printmaking at the Otago School of Art. Time living and working overseas, saw her influenced by the aesthetics of Japan and inspired by the minimal, wintery landscape of Europe and Canada.
Kyla’s delicate work explores the physical impact of the elements on the environment as well as the consequences of human occupation of the land. Working mainly in mezzotint and drypoint, she strives to find a sense of stillness and a quiet celebration of nature. Her work is firmly grounded in a sense of place.
In 2006, aspiring to develop a supportive environment for works on paper in Wellington, Kyla opened Solander: works on paper Gallery. In 2009 she was joined by two other directors and later stepped away from the gallery to focus on family. Kyla recently returned to her home province Murihiku and spent a year living in Northern Southland. Now settled in Dunedin, Kyla is passionate about printmaking she hopes to spread the wonder that is ink on paper. Little Prints Printmaking was founded by Kyla and enables portable printmaking workshops.
Kyla has exhibited in New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada and her work is held in private and public collections around the world.
In 2023 Kyla was awarded the William Hodges Fellowship through the Southland Art Foundation, a 12 week residency this culminated in an exhibition ‘Tracing the Land’ in Invercargill.