Jacqueline Fahey The Birthday Party 1974. Oil on board. Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, purchased 1989
Jacqueline Fahey Sisters Communing 1974. Oil on board. Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago
Jacqueline Fahey My Skirt's in Your Fucking Room! 1979. Oil on board. Collection of William Dart, Auckland
This exhibition is now closed
Overflowing with love, conflict and quiet despair, Fahey’s paintings from the 1970s bristle with the intensity of domestic life.
Before ‘the personal is political’ became a rallying cry for feminism in the 1960s, artist Jacqueline Fahey began to survey the private realities of New Zealand women, making paintings that challenged accepted archetypes of female experience and ‘appropriate’ subjects for art. Often painting from the vantage point of the kitchen table, she positioned it as the nexus for the conflicts and complexities of family life. This exhibition reappraises Fahey’s most influential body of work, the psychologically charged interiors of the 1970s.
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Date:
22 November 2017 – 11 March 2018 -
Curator:
Felicity Milburn -
Exhibition number:
1048
Collection works in this exhibition
Related
Jacqueline Fahey: say something!
In an era when women were often silenced and sidelined, artist Jacqueline Fahey’s voice was distinctive and unapologetic. Speaking up is important, but saying something worthwhile matters too.
Arts Foundation Icon Jacqueline Fahey was one of the first New Zealand artists to paint from a feminist perspective. In this book, her psychologically charged domestic paintings of the 1970s, in which she unflinchingly surveyed her own private reality, are revisited by contemporary feminist authors.
At once familiar and unsettling, these paintings overflow with love, loss, conflict and quiet despair, and bristle with all the intensity of domestic life.
Author: Felicity Milburn with Allie Eagle, Julia Holden, Bronwyn Labrum, Lana Lopesi, Zoe Roland and Julia Waite.
Published by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū in 2017.
film
Jacqueline Fahey talk
Jacqueline Fahey interviewed by Felicity Milburn at the Christchurch Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 10 January 2018.
Please note that this presentation is available as audio only.
film
Jacqueline Fahey: In her own words
Artist Jacqueline Fahey in conversation with curator Felicity Milburn.
Running time 13:21.
My Favourite
Jacqueline Fahey's Mother and daughter quarrelling
I first encountered Jacqueline Fahey’s Mother and daughter quarrelling (1977)—in reproduced form—in Art History class during my final year at Shirley Boys’ High. We’d just entered the new millennium and at some point amid that final year our entire form group lost access to our senior common room for a week because a couple of boys had sellotaped a selection of pages from some off-brand Penthouse onto the roll-up projector screen that hung from the ceiling. That’s just to give you an idea of the prevalent gender politics of the time and place.
Director's Foreword
Director's Foreword
As I write this, I’m still smiling with pleasure and pride at the huge success of the Gallery Foundation’s fundraising drive for our own work by Ron Mueck. Wonderful in its own right, it’s amazing to finish the 2017 calendar year knowing a sculpture by Mueck is now on its way to join the other four ‘great works’ for Christchurch.
Commentary
An Undeniable Promise
There is such a burden of expectation placed on Anne’s painting, and on the exhibition… itself. I feel, like many women painters that she is being asked to prove an undeniable promise. This is unfair.
Notes
New Lead Curator Announced
Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū is delighted to announce the appointment of our new lead curator, Felicity Milburn.
Notes
Portobello Settee by Jacqueline Fahey
This article first appeared in The Press on 19 January 2018 as 'A settee with hidden depths'.