Joanna Margaret Paul Frugal Pleasures [still life with statuette and Latin text] 1999. Gouache and pencil on paper. Collection of David and Keren Skegg, Dunedin, on deposit at Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, L2011/43. Courtesy of the Joanna Margaret Paul Estate
Joanna Margaret Paul Untitled, 22 Royal Terrace 1971. Acrylic on board. Private collection. Courtesy of the Joanna Margaret Paul Estate
Joanna Margaret Paul [Untitled, Interior] undated. Coloured photograph. Collection of the Joanna Margaret Paul Estate
This exhibition is now closed
A major retrospective celebrating the career and legacy of Joanna Margaret Paul.
With a multi-disciplinary practice spanning drawing, painting, poetry, photography and film, Joanna Margaret Paul (1945–2003) was an important and pioneering artist. Imagined in the context of a room considers the resonance and legacy of Paul’s work in the contemporary moment. This major exhibition presents a close study of her career from the 1970s to the 2000s and is accompanied by a significant publication. Moving across the different phases of Paul’s life as an artist, the exhibition traces key journeys that shaped her career: from Ōtepoti Dunedin to Te Pataka o Rakaihautū Banks Peninsula, Whanganui and beyond; between the landscape and the interior; the mind, body and spirit; between presence and absence.
Developed by Dunedin Public Art Gallery with project partner Sarjeant Art Gallery Te Whare o Rehua Whanganui.
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Date:
4 December 2021 – 6 March 2022 -
Exhibition number:
1134
Collection works in this exhibition
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Commentary
Gifts on the Table: a tribute to Joanna
Summer green as lint / wound about the bone / bandaged in green I lay / quiet all summer long / summer sings a song / of its own.
This is an unpublished poem written by Joanna when she was living at Barrys Bay on Banks Peninsula. She moved there with her husband Jeffrey Harris and their daughter, Magdalena, in 1975. The family had previously been staying at Okains Bay. There’s a languid, sensuous feel to the lines. The summer is beautiful, it’s green and musical and encompassing, and yet a feeling of unsettlement arises. The choice of ‘lint’ and ‘bandaged’ suggest damage and there’s a need to rest up, a need for healing. I wonder if Joanna was pregnant at this time; that would make it 1976 and she would be awaiting the birth of her second daughter, Imogen. The baby was born in the Akaroa hospital in late February, but sadly died after surgery for a heart condition in December of the same year. An exquisite white marble headstone, a hemisphere carved by Jeffrey, marks the grave in the Akaroa cemetery. Joanna herself was buried there in 2003.
My Favourite
Joanna Margaret Paul's Barrys Bay: Interior With Bed And Doll
I never met Joanna Paul, but I believe that she and my late father, Michael King, were good friends. After my father died in 2004, I found a large diptych frame with a photo of Joanna on one side, and Irihapeti Ramsden on the other; both black and white and young and charismatic—two women he admired greatly who had both died in the preceding year. The frame was folded shut, on top of a bookcase in his study, as if in hiding. I took it down and set it open on his desk overlooking the estuary at Opoutere.
Artist interview
A Torch and a Light
Shannon Te Ao is an artist of Ngāti Tūwharetoa descent. In 2016 Te Ao won the Walters Prize for his works, two shoots that stretch far out (2013–14) and okea ururoatia (never say die) (2016). Working in video and other performative practices Te Ao investigates the implications of various social and linguistic modes. Assistant curator Nathan Pohio, himself a nominee for the 2016 Walters Prize, discussed working practice with Te Ao in December 2016.