Zoë Nash

VIEW WORKS

Zoë Nash is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her brightly coloured, celebratory works explore a slow and mindful accumulation of repeated and highly detailed mark making. Reflecting her love of nature, Zoë’s works increasingly draw on selected plant and flower motifs as inspiration. Frequently initiated by things seen, things spoken, or things remembered, narrative and nostalgia are also used to trigger personal connection with viewers.

With a set of clearly defined intentions but no pre-conceived expectations regarding outcome, Zoë’s works slowly, carefully, intuitively, and often painstakingly, evolve and build up over time. Through steady repeats of simple techniques, Zoë creates surfaces and spaces that are full of vibrant patterns. These cause visual disruption and toy with perspective and depth. Ever conscious of how each mark added influences and is influenced by those around it, Zoë’s work relies on an ongoing process of cross-referencing, editing, refining, and adding more and more until the composition is balanced, cohesive, and evokes the desired emotional response.

“I love how my artworks grow and evolve with every mark made or action taken so that in the end, just a like a knitted jumper, the whole becomes more 
than the sum of its parts.”Zoë has a Master of Fine Arts degree (Whitecliffe, 2002), a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and History (University of Auckland, 1991) and adult teaching qualifications (Manukau Institute of Technology, 2005). Finalist nominations include the Parkin Drawing Prize, the Trust Waikato Contemporary Art Awards, the Small Sculpture Prize at the Waiheke Community Art Gallery, and several Finalist nominations in the Walker & Hall Waiheke Art Awards, including receiving the Zinni Douglas Merit Award. Zoë is also a recipient of the Whitecliffe Post Grad Scholarship. She currently lives in coastal west Auckland, creating from her garden studio, as well as being actively involved in arts education.


Recent Selected Exhibitions:

  • Delightfully Pernicious, solo exhibition Railway Street Gallery + Studios, 5–22 June, 2024.

  • Mt Albert Grammar School permanent drawing installation: design and co-creation of permanent site- specific drawing, leading a team of senior arts students, February 2023.

  • A Time and A Place, solo exhibition Railway Street Gallery + Studios, 9–23 March, 2023.

  • Found, Wound and Woven, site-specific installation, Kaipara Coast Sculpture Gardens, November 2022– November 2023.

  • Browne School of Art Faculty Shows,
    BSA Gallery, Auckland.
    Praxis, 5 March–12 April 2024, in-sight, 7 March–1 April 2023, Stellar, 8–26 March 2022, Opus, 15 June–3 July 2021, Matrix, 25 Feb–14 March 2020, Myriad, Feb 26– March 16 2019.

  • Flirting With Form: Works by Toi Ako Artists, (a group show curated and initiated by Connect The Dots, a charitable trust working creatively with older people and those with dementia… The exhibition showcases selected works from the Toi Ako 6-month mentoring programme, 2019, and features artwork made by participants alongside works from their mentors), Papakura Art Gallery, 17 March–18 April, 2020.

  • System & Circumstance: Zoë Nash and Linda Roche. Process/Colour/Materiality, BSA Gallery, Auckland, 6–23 November, 2019.

  • Group exhibition at Corbans Estate Art Centre as part of the TRASHED AS Artist in Residence Programme with the Waitakere Refuse and Recycling Centre,
    April 1–May 31, 2019. On-site residency for three months prior.

  • Slowly and Carefully, solo exhibition, The Grey Place, Auckland, June 26–July 7,