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Maori weapons, tea cups, doilies, jugs and Joseph Banks are a few aspects of ‘claim to clay’ - a joint exhibition by Auckland based painter Joanna Fieldes and Marlborough ceramic artist Fran Maguire at the Auckland Botanic Gardens, Visitor Centre Huakaiwaka, from 15 November until 9 January 2011. Hours 8.00am - 4.30pm Mon - Fri and 9.00am - 5.00pm Sat - Sun.

This is a collaborative exhibition in which both artists use vessels to present work about New Zealand’s colonial past:  Fieldes uses vessels within her oil paintings as a metaphor for Maori and Pakeha and colonial settlement, Maguire as guardians and carriers of culture and ritual.

Joanna Fieldes has established her reputation as a painter with a strong social conscience.  Her work is held in public and private collections.  She articulates a form of storytelling through paint by juxtaposing the imported with the indigenous.  Using a rich imagination and strong painterly style, Joanna places traditional European domestic vessels in typical New Zealand landscapes.  Her colour palette is familiar and seductive to any New Zealander.  Joanna’s work points to the challenges that biculturalism presents.  There is a tension in her work which provokes question.

Fran Maguire is a well-known, award-winning ceramic artist who has worked with clay since the early 1990s.  Some of the ideas invested in this work are:  The migration and preservation of ritual and culture through domestic objects; the oddity of ornate Victorian vessels in an early New Zealand context; European flowers and New Zealand native insects; the connection to an ancestral past through domestic objects – the china cabinet; the privilege of art, the necessity of craft and compromise of materials.

This is a thought-provoking, intelligent exhibition by two well-established artists, and should provide any visitor to the Auckland Botanic Gardens visitor’s centre this summer with food for thought.

claim to clay – an exhibition by Joanna Fieldes and Fran Maguire

Auckland Botanic Gardens, Visitor Centre Huakaiwaka, 15 Nov 2010 – 9 Jan 2011