B.
Scene stealer
Behind the scenes
It was great to see painter Jacqueline Fahey named as one of the new batch of 'Icons' announced by the New Zealand Arts Foundation.
Limited to a circle of twenty living artists at any one time, the Icon Award/ Whakamana Hiranga is the Foundation's highest honour and recognises senior New Zealand artists for their extraordinary achievements. The other Icons named in this round were singer Kiri Te Kanawa, film-maker Geoff Murphy, artist/arts educator Cliff Whiting and architect Ian Athfield.
Jacqueline Fahey Mother and daughter quarrelling 1977. Oil/collage on board. Purchased, 1983. Reproduced courtesy of Jacqueline Fahey
Fahey, a celebrated artist who has also written two novels and a two-volume memoir, is represented by two works in Christchurch Art Gallery's collection. The fragmented composition of Mother and daughter quarrelling (1977) suggests the divisions that arose between two generations of women (symbolised by the artist and her mother) during the early years of the women's liberation movement. Fahey was one of the first New Zealand artists to paint from a feminist perspective, saying: 'Art should come from what an artist knows about life, and if what a woman knows is not what a man knows, then her art is going to have to be different.'
On a personal note, I loved how Fahey, a prolific, perceptive and irascibly irreverent painter of self-portraits, managed to thoroughly upstage even Kiri in the official photo (she's second from the right).
Related
Collection
Jacqueline Fahey Speedy's Return
For the exhibition Jacqueline Fahey: Say Something! (22 November 2017 – 11 March 2018) this work was displayed with the following label:
Fahey’s husband, the noted psychiatrist Fraser McDonald, held positions at a number of institutions throughout New Zealand, and they raised their three daughters in a series of houses on hospital grounds. In Porirua, the gardens were overseen by a patient, Mr Quickly (also known as Speedy), who had studied at Kew Gardens in England and worked on a royal estate. He supplied the family with a steady supply of produce and fresh flowers. Fahey recalled that she could cope with the flowers but that the fruit and vegetables, which he clearly expected her to make into preserves, showed up her shortcomings as a ‘proper’ doctor’s wife. When the family moved to Kingseat Hospital, near Auckland, Mr Quickly came with them. This painting, a study in warm autumnal colours and dappled shadows, celebrates what Fahey described as 'the light he brought into all of our lives'.
Collection
Jacqueline Fahey Mother and daughter quarrelling
“When Mum first told me not to outstrip my sisters, I felt incensed by her lack of understanding, especially when she was so creative herself. She later decreed that I must devote myself to my children and to [my husband] Fraser; I could no longer put myself first. And so it continued, a futile struggle. Deeply disturbing, and very common between mothers and daughters throughout history. Mothers, out of fear, are determined to find meaning in life. Genetic matter is repeated again and again, as suggested by the Persian carpet, which rises up to compete with the genetic matter pulsing out of our heads. In the mirror my more compassionate alter ego watches, appalled at my lack of control.” —Jacqueline Fahey, 2017
A leading figure of Aotearoa’s feminist art movement from the 1970s onward, Allie Eagle found a strong role model in Jacqueline Fahey’s art. She said: “What was exciting about Jacquie’s work was the domestic interior, subverted away from the male-view pleasantries of ‘woman happily domiciled’ into painted rage and honest truth about suburban women’s reality (well… some women’s reality). Her paintings worked powerfully and satisfyingly into the idea of women speaking for and about themselves.”
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )