Exhibition Wed 19th February - Sat 8th March
Opening Event Wed 19th 5-7pm
What I Imagine When Sitting At My Table
'An Evening At The Table Celebrating How Brilliant Women Are As We’re Forced To Watch Powerful Men, Who Turned Out To be Such Losers, Burn The World Down'
Artist Statement - Chloe Blades
What I Imagine When Sitting at the Table
When I metamorphosed my way into motherhood I mostly felt the contradictions of it all as I clawed onto what was left of my sanity. I wanted to surround myself with people but be alone. I wanted plans to be made but get cancelled. I wanted peace and quiet but not the kind that came every hour and a half in the night as I looked down at my baby feeding and saw dark holes for eyes.
I’d be walking and strangers would stare adoringly into the pram and tell me to enjoy every minute, it goes so fast, but in the destabilising state of sleep depravation I was in I’d stare vacantly and think that ‘enjoy’ was a questionable verb to ascribe to this wonderful life-changing clusterfuck. I’ve brought new life into this world but it’s being destroyed by the male ego. Rebecca Shaw, at The Guardian, captured it brilliantly with her should-be Pulitzer winning headline - “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.”
Which reminded me of Belinda from Fleabag who says,
“Women are born with pain built in. It’s our physical destiny. Period pains, sore boobs, child birth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives. Men don’t. They have to seek it out. They invent all sorts of gods and demons and things so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. Then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other, and when there aren’t any wars they play rugby.”
Here women were creating and nurturing life, and I was eating antidepressants in order to function in a world manufactured for men by men with men in mind (read Feminist City by Leslie Kern), as ‘strongmen’ invaded countries, displaced millions, and destroyed life. My friends listened to my not new but newly discovered theory about the power of women and satiated my need for this debate and joined me at the table where these conversations became the most wonderful moments of temporary respite. We laughed, we drank, we read.
I strapped the baby to me and started painting exuberant, colourful tables that I imagined being sat at with friends or alone, drinking wine and reading, and experiencing nothing but pure undulated joy, in wholly unattainable places. I wanted to capture the fact that things can look beautiful and bring joy, like motherhood and womanhood, yet they often have an underlying complexity to them that’s not obvious at first.
Evie Kemp, Natalie Savage, Jacqueline Fahey and Studio Soph have been huge inspirations of mine with regards to their use of bold colours and their artistic playfulness. Evie Kemp is one of New Zealand’s greatest maximalists and an artist who exemplifies joy, as documented in her book Much. Natalie Savage transformed the way I paint and has been my greatest discovery, she captures the undulated wonderfulness of being at a table topped with excessive wine and food - it looks like a place I go to when I close my eyes. And this idea of dreaming, transcending to somewhere completely unattainable and out of this world joyful for temporary respite, is what I wanted to capture too.
Deborah Levy, author of the memoir Real Estate, is also a driving force - she taught me that women will always have their imaginations to build and create whatever they like and no one can demolish it, monetise it, or take it away. My imagined real estate, when I’m being tugged on by the toddler telling me he needs another poo, is at my French chateaux with my six cats and butler named Reine who feeds me grapes and talks to me about all the wine in my cellar. But when I’m suddenly woken from my temporary reprieve, perhaps in Italy at my table crammed with pizza and sardines, because the baby’s thrown the sloppy pasta sauce on the floor that I spent a day making, I look at them both as their mother and think how lucky I am that these little creatures brought me and my art to life.
About Chloe Blades
Chloe Blades is a manager at Unity Books in Auckland and Director on the Board of Booksellers. Alongside reviewing books on TVNZ’s Breakfast Show, she has written for The Spinoff, WOMAN magazine and Crane Brothers. In 2023 Chloe received a RISE Booksellers scholarship to go to San Francisco and work at The Booksmith in Haight-Ashbury.
Chloe is also an artist and has had a sold-out show, alongside Laurette Looker, at Crafty Baker in Titirangi, and was the winner of the 2024 Managers Special Mention Award at the Emerging Artists Event at Upstairs Art Gallery.
A Basket Full of Armholes
'Get off the grass' 325 x 280mm Canvas, acrylic, thread & wood
Artist Statement - Debbie Tubb
A Basket Full of Armholes
As a child I would rarely misbehave. I coloured between the lines. These works have become my reflective rebellion.
Through the act of material disruption, I aim to dislocate traditional frameworks of the canvas, shifting the gaze to a less conventional view. Painting, cutting, piecing and stitching is utilised to unsettle preconceptions of where or how an image is constructed.
Searching for a connection in the fragmented, in each piece I work through a dialogue between past and present. Disassembling and reconfiguring works allows for reclamation and reinterpretation.
‘A Basket Full of Armholes’ is a celebration of Jackie, my late Mum. It explores how we become both distinct and inseparably linked as mother and daughter. The title of the show and the works themselves are named after her idioms, for example substituting fuck with fudge, bastard with basket, asshole with armhole.
About Debbie Tubb
Debbie is a full-time artist based in Tamaki Makaurau. Debbie graduated from the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) with a BVA in 2013. Her works are held in the AUT art collection, private collections and she has exhibited in various group shows. Debbie is interested in creating and participating in opportunities that champion female makers. In April 2024 she established the inaugural ‘Chicks and their Machines’, a car boot sale for contemporary art at Silo Park.
In 2023 & 2024 Debbie was a finalist in the Waiheke Walker & Hall Art Awards and in 2024, a finalist in the Parkin Drawing Prize.