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Eileen Mayo has a special place in Christchurch’s art history, not only because of her extraordinary prints and illustrious career but also her tangible connections with this city. Mayo settled here in Christchurch in 1967, having established a career as a printmaker and designer in Britain and Australia. Her British contemporaries included Mabel Annesley and Clare Leighton, both of whom are included in this exhibition, and several works by these artists came into the Gallery's collection as part of a gift of British modernist prints by Redfern Gallery director Rex Nan Kivell.

Mayo adored cats. They were a constant source of companionship throughout her life and were regularly used as subjects in her art.

The Golden Age 18 December 2015 – 1 May 2016

In the exhibition White on White (23 November 2008 - 26 October 2009), this work appeared with the following label:

The kotuku lives in other parts of the world (like Asia and the Pacific), but is very rare in New Zealand, with just one permanent population of 100 to 120 birds found near Okarito in South Westland.

In the past, their beautiful long feathers were worn as head-ornaments by important Maori leaders. Sometimes they would keep a bird in a special cage, so that when a new feather grew, someone was waiting and ready to pull it out!

This painting was one of Eileen Mayo’s original designs for a set of cards (Rare and Endangered Birds of New Zealand) collected from packets of Gregg’s jelly.

Eileen Mayo had the idea for making this work in 1966 during a visit to Cuningham House, the largest and oldest of the display houses in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens. It was not until 1980, however, that she completed A Garden Enclosed. Opened in 1924, Cuningham House was funded through a bequest by Mr C.A.C. Cuningham, a Christchurch law clerk. Such conservatories, or ‘winter gardens’, were used to house botanic specimens from warmer climates. The distinctive high dome-shaped glass roof is capped with a glazed lantern, and the building was heated with a boiler and a network of pipes throughout the space to provide a suitable climate for tropical plants like the cyclamen, poinsettia and Kentia palms Mayo has depicted. Her view simplifies the architecture of the building, which was designed to echo a classic English orangery in a Neo Classical style. It incorporates a double height space to accommodate taller plants and an elevated viewing gallery. A leading architectural Christchurch firm, Collins and Harman, modelled the design for Cuningham House on the Reid Winter Gardens at Springburn Park, Glasgow.

(Turn, Turn, Turn: A Year in Art, 27 July 2019 – 8 March 2020)

English-born Eileen Mayo excelled across a remarkable range of media, including drawing, linocuts, wood engraving, lithography, tapestry and silk screening. She also became a sought-after commercial designer, known for exquisitely detailed and balanced images that appeared on stamps and coins in Australia and New Zealand. Mayo had lived in New Zealand for twenty years when she made this screenprint of young fern fronds in the lush native bush. One of her last prints, it combines an enduring appreciation of the natural world with extraordinary technical ability, conveying not only the beauty of the plants she depicts, but a sense of their place within a complex and interconnected ecosystem.

(Unseen: The Changing Collection, 18 December 2015 – 19 June 2016)

Born and trained in England, and with an established artistic practice there, Eileen Mayo moved to Australia in 1952, departing for New Zealand ten years later. She settled in Christchurch in 1965 and lived there almost exclusively, aside from a brief period in Dunedin, until her death in 1994. This latter part of Mayo’s career was characterised by her experimentation with a variety of printmaking techniques, including relief printing and screenprints. 'Victorian Jug' is a significant work from this time and reflects Mayo’s accomplished manipulation of shapes, textures and colours. She contrasts the sturdy geometry of the green tartan tablecloth with the ornate decoration of the jug, and an exuberant arrangement of flowers, including daisies, cornflowers, fuchsias and dianthus.

(Turn, Turn, Turn: A Year in Art, 27 July 2019 – 8 March 2020)

In her linocut print Doric Dairy, Eileen Mayo takes pleasure in observing a quaintly old-fashioned and endangered livelihood. The hurrying milkman delivers fresh supplies by horse and cart, moving from house to house to refill his customers’ cans or jugs from his sturdy churn. Eileen Mayo had met Claude Flight, principal champion of the linocut, while she was working at the Grosvenor School of Art in London as a life-class model. He is said to have instructed her in linocut technique over the telephone. She exhibited her earliest works in the Second Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts at London’s Redfern Gallery in 1930. Mayo left England for Australia in 1952 and ten years later joined family in New Zealand, where she would establish her reputation as a significant printmaker and teacher.

(Leaving for Work, 2 October 2021 - 1 May 2022)

Two prints from early in Eileen Mayo’s career show the strength of her natural ability. Eileen was nineteen and studying at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, when she made the wood engraving Skaters. She made Turkish Bath a few years later in response to an invitation to put work in the Second Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts at the Redfern Gallery, London. Her invitation came from Claude Flight, the linocut’s principal champion, who reportedly instructed her on the technique over the telephone. She had met Flight, a teacher at the Grosvenor School of Art, while working there in 1929 as a life-class model.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Cats were a particularly favourite subject of Eileen Mayo but all animal and botanical subjects were a constant source of inspiration for her. She illustrated several books on nature subjects, including the monumental The Story of Living Things and Their Evolution (1948). A major influence on Mayo was Claude Flight, under whom she studied the linocut technique at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in 1928. She exhibited regularly with the British Linocut exhibitions held in London between 1929 and 1937. Mayo emigrated to Sydney in 1953 and settled in New Zealand in 1962. She taught at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Art from 1967 to 1972.

There is an information sheet available about this work.