Gallery 2
Pantea Rastegari
Pull Yourself Together
Graphite on paper $2000
Pull yourself together. You can’t afford time to grieve. Time flies. Look at your watch. It’s ticking!
Jo Stallard
Not Woman Just Me
Oil and aluminium leaf on canvas $1900
Words frame the context in which we assess and categorise someone. The social context dictates those terms of reference. A person’s achievements don’t require gender, they speak for themselves.
I am not woman, I am just me.
Jeanette Verster
Pulled In All Directions
Fibre $600
We are, and mean different things to different people and we are constantly switching between the roles we play. The liberation that suffrage, women’s lib and feminism brought did not change that. If anything the demands on women have never been greater. It is not a matter of a woman ‘having it all’, it is often ‘giving it all’.
Renate Verbrugge
Not Kate 1893
Sculpture $4500
This is a tribute to Kate Sheppard who led the Suffrage movement to establish voting rights for women in 1893.
The golden gridlines represent the victory, the celebration, and the first women who dressed up in their ‘Sunday Best’ to vote as the first women in history.
Glenys Howland
Magical Hands
Mixed media $400
The concept of this painting originated from my childhood experiences and the natural drawings from the human body. My painting title ‘Magical Hands’ is a combination of charcoal drawings done in a life drawing class and painting. Drawing and painting is my passion and I attempt to draw every day.
My painting represents love, passion and determination.
Debbie Shepherd
Kate
Debbie Shepherd Free motion stitch, collage, acrylic paint on silk organza and canvas $1500
September 19, 2018 marked the 125th anniversary of the successful campaign for votes for women in New Zealand. In 1893, thanks to the relentless efforts of Kate Sheppard and her fellow suffragists, the Electoral Act was passed by Parliament and New Zealand became the first country in which all women could exercise the right to vote.
Kate Sheppard (1847 – 1934)
Suffragist, social reformer, writer. Initiator and champion of the campaign for votes for women.
1847 - Born Catherine Wilson Malcolm, in Liverpool, England. 1868 - Migrated to Christchurch, NZ, aged 21.
1871 - Married merchant Walter Sheppard.
1885 - Kate Sheppard became a founding member of the New Zealand Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which advocated women’s suffrage as a means to fight for liquor prohibition. The WCTU’s emphasis throughout the campaigns, however, was on the right of women to vote; that right had previously been extended to males over 21 years. Women, in being excluded, had been classed with juveniles, lunatics and criminals.
1891 - The franchise department of the WCTU took the first of three major petitions to Parliament. It was signed by more than 9,000 women, and the second in 1892 by more than 19,000. 1893 - Kate Sheppard and her fellow suffragists gathered
the signatures of nearly 32,000 women to demonstrate the groundswell of support for their cause. A 270m long petition – then the largest ever presented to Parliament – was unrolled across the chamber of the House with dramatic effect.
1893 - The Electoral Act was passed on 19 September and Kate Sheppard received a telegram from the Premier, Richard Seddon, previously her political enemy in the House, conceding victory to the women. 65% of all New Zealand women over 21 voted in the first election. New Zealand had become the first country in which all women exercised the right to vote. The news took New Zealand by storm and inspired suffrage movements all over the world
Fiona Clark
Maree and Jean aka Haliburton and Todd at the PEPANZ
Photography $1300
This image is a documentation of a performance by Jean Kahui and Maree Dogetty in response to the oil and gas companies’ presence and sponsorship in Taranaki.
They ‘dressed’ for the Petroleum Conference held in New Plymouth on 21 March 2017.
This work confronts us about sponsorship and its ethics.
Jean and Maree also brought humour as the ‘sleasey oil men’ persona - Halliburton and Todd, challenging the gender balance in the same industry.
Cherie Dodds
In the Moment
Oil on canvas $400
In the moment, enjoy her.
In the moment push the grief of what could be to the background.
In the moment, feel the love.
In the moment ignore the future.
Because in this moment she is happy and feels loved,
and in some other world
she can speak, sing, dance and run.
Parents of a disabled child.
Michelle Rowland
Annie Ward –- Suffragist
Oil on Chestnut $450
My great–great–grandmother Ann Ward was one of the first six women in the world to vote. I wish to acknowledge the courage, tenacity and strength of character of our early pioneer women. Her husband was the Maori interpreter and guide for the Parihaka prophets Tohu and Te Whiti O Rongomai during their travels to the South Island. Both profound historic events in NZ history.
Joelle Xavier
Igneous Lace
Sculpture, andesite $500
‘Femininity and Strength’ combined. This piece has the solidity of stone, yet is very fragile in its most delicate parts. Resistant, resilient, it can weather the toughest conditions life can throw at it but can equally break in an instant if handled the wrong way.
This is my own meaning, the viewer may respond in a totally different way; her/his response will be just as valid and justified as mine.
Jessica Taunt
18th Century Ensemble
Silk and calico fabrics, Guest NFS
This 18th century replica dress, including stays (corset), bum roll, petticoat, hand-embroidered pockets and hat was made as a major project as a first-year student studying costume contruction at Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School.
The gold is 100% silk; the petticoat, bum roll and corset are calico. There are six metres of fabric in the two layers of petticoat.
Vicky Taylor
Trapped Within
Woodburning (Pyrography) $390
Outside appearances of perfection can be deceiving. Instead, we can contain, hide and lock-up what we truly feel, want and need. We become ‘trapped within’.
Margaret Foley
Warrior Princess Armour
Pottery $78
Wasn’t it great when we all had time to spend with our girlfiends, when our besties would pop into our home and share a cuppa, often unannounced, knowing the door was always open and a compassionate ear at the ready. You’d stop whatever you were
doing and fill the kettle. Relationships and friends were important back then. We would sit and chat with the teapot brewing and a few home-made biscuits on a plate in the middle of the table. Our chats, never gossip, could fill an hour or more; kids’ capers, our hubbies, what they did and didn’t get right, our health and women’s complaints, the latest new recipe, our mothers-in-law, births, deaths and marriage and, of course, sharing my latest pottery project. As the world has got busier and free time is at a premium those days have slipped away. Now it’s finding a spare few minutes to sit in a noisy café with a flat white and not much time to listen. I miss those days. But please remember, for you my dear friends, the door is always be open and the kettle full.
Jo Dixey
Inner Strength
Embroidery $400
Within all of us there is a true self, we just have to create a life that allows that inner person to shine. To do this we need to follow our passions, then the world will always see the true us. Trying to fit into a box that other people put us in results in the inner self becoming dull.
Myfanwy Morris
Glass Bubble
Oilstick, ink, crayon and pastel on board $1000
The innocence of love and nature
will set us free,
from this fear, obsession and oppression
that rules the minds of many.
Laughter and compassion, openess and discipline.
These joys make light, giving new life flight,
shattering the glass bubble conceived at birth.
Overcoming the objectifying traditions of a ruling class club.
Jenny Bielawski
The Invisible Woman
Watercolour paint wash, embroidery cotton hand-stitching $500
This work is intended to acknowledge the thousands of women who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make positive changes in the world around them. Many of these women eventually become known for their work and are given the credit due them; most remain anonymous, FACELESS, and INVISIBLE.
I must give credit to Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha (1860- 1939) for some of the visual ideas used in this work.
Tracey Mather
Retro Mirror
Mixed Media $45
Mirror,mirror on the wall......who is the fairest of them all?
The Suffrage Movement has taken the fairytale phrase and made it a reality. Our women are able to be fair, honest, loving and giving without hindrance, and as we can follow our dreams, we smile, and the mirror smiles back!
But, we are not finished,as we address today’s issues.
Oriah Rapley
Bird Goddess – Vincere
Stone $1200
This work ‘Vincere’, from a series of bird goddesses, is self–reflective and speaks about strength and timelessness. In this piece she takes on a protective guardian presence, standing as silent witness. Her form is feminine but celebrates the essential grace of all human beings reflecting back to the viewer their own strength, courage and freedom.
Fern Petrie
Prelude To A Dream
Oil on canvas $9600
This work honors the mothers, sisters and teachers who are so influential in the shaping of the minds of small children. Their influence has such an impact on the people these children will become.
All of us have rituals which we live by. Some are an intrinsic part of childhood, a short but important part of life on which we build our understanding of the world. In this work I wanted to capture the
joy of the small but significant ritual of the bedtime story and try to impart the feeling of security, happiness and wonder it brought me as a child. Dressing up like one’s favorite characters in a book is a special treat for any child and I have chosen to show these children in the moments before bed when the story has been mentioned but is yet to be read. Their anticipation at the story to come has become a palpable thing. Upon the book perches a brilliant blue butterfly, the symbol of the words about to take flight in their imaginations. Around them many other butterflies flutter. These represent the memories of other past stories, snippets of inspiration, moments of pure joy that remain from other evenings.
Fern Petrie
The First Laurel
Oil on canvas $7900
Cleopatra
The First Laurel
‘She took a small boat, and one only of her confidents, Apollodorus, the Sicilian, along with her, and in the dusk of the evening landed near the palace. She was at a loss how to get in undiscovered,
till she thought of putting herself into the coverlet of a bed and lying at length, whilst Apollodorus tied up the bedding and carried it on his back through the gates to Caesar’s apartment. Caesar
was first captivated by this proof of Cleopatra’s bold wit, and was afterwards so overcome by the charm of her society, that he made a reconciliation between her and her brother, on condition that she should rule as his colleague in the kingdom. A festival was kept to celebrate this reconciliation’ . . . Plutarch
When she first met Caesar, her brother king was trying to oust her and it was only Cleopatra’s initiative, bravery and imagination that made the meeting with Caesar possible.
I admire Cleopatra as she was incredibly intelligent and like Elizabeth I, was brave enough to seek her own path in a hostile patriarchal world. Her life was continually fraught with danger as she strove for the right to retain her place in a world which was in a constant state of upheaval.
At the time this painting depicts - years before Caesar’s murder, her love affair with Mark Antony and the feud with Octavian - she was a young but shrewd girl who played her cards perfectly and when the bedding (or carpet according to the translation) was unrolled, Cleopatra took her place at the centre of one of the greatest power struggles of the age...a woman to admire.
The Suffragette Memorial
Rhonda Bunyan
In Honour and in Loving Reverent Memory
Photograph and mixed media $1600
My artwork commemorates British suffragette, Emily Wilding Davision, who stepped out in front of the King’s horse at Epsom Derby in 1913 and died of her injuries four days later. The Suffragette (publication), the official organ of the Women’s Social and Political Union, edited by Christabel Pankhurst published a Memorial on its front page (pictured). My ‘angel’ sits atop a grave Eltham Cemetery. Born in London, England, on October 11, 1872, Emily Wilding Davison joined the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1906, then quit her teaching job to work full-time for equal voting rights. A militant member of the British suffragette movement, Davison was jailed several times for protest-related offenses and attempted to starve herself while serving time in Manchester’s Strangeways Prison. Many jailed suffragists went on hunger strikes to protest the government’s refusal to classify them as political prisoners. Davison barricaded herself in a cell for a time. The guards flooded her cell with water. Later writing about the experience, Davison stated, “I had to hold on like grim death. The power of the water seemed terrific, and it was cold as ice,” according to the journal Social Research.
In 1913, she stepped in front of a horse during the Epsom Derby and died of her injuries. To this day there is conjecture as to whether it was a protest that went horribly wrong or if, indeed, she committed suicide. The media criticized her actions as the act of a madwoman, but suffragist newspapers hailed Davison as a martyr for the cause. Whether she intended to commit suicide at the derby has been debated for years. Some think it was accidental as Davison had bought a round-trip train ticket to go home after the event. In any case, supporters of the Votes for Women campaign turned out by
the thousands for Davison’s funeral procession. Her body was laid to rest in Morpeth, Northumberland. Her gravestone reads “Deeds not Words,” a popular suffragist motto.
Roughly 15 years after her death, Davison’s dream was finally realised. Britain gave women the right to vote in 1928.
Dale Copeland
The Arden Platter
Assemblage $850
The instructions on the box lid promise “Ten minutes of rhythmic patting each day will keep the lines and wrinkles away.” Yeah, right. Would that it could be so easy.
This work about change has itself changed. I took it to an exhibition in Australia and Customs had to fumigate it because of the turkey claw. I’d thought ‘fumigation’ sounded like a gas, but they blasted it with gamma rays.
You might be aware that gamma rays, even ultraviolet rays, if bright enough for long enough, will turn glass purple. I hadn’t know that they would also colour false teeth!
So the lens became purple and the rack of teeth turned puce. I was horrified, and thought the change had ruined the work. But I’ve come to like it, we change. We can’t stop it , so may as well enjoy it.
Margaret Street
Ms Cyclades
Ceramic clay, acrylic paints $60
This is the bare bones of the female. The basic, crude essentails; more extreme, gut-wrenching and elemental. I was made in desperation, not celebration. My curves and attributes were not enjoyed and adored; my power was placated and feared. Crudeley made, but perhaps painted with care.I am not a person but an idea. What do you want to be?
How would you model yoursel?
Maree Liddington
Zipped up
Saori Weaving $325
Would it be possible to create an artwork by weaving zips together? That was my challenge for this piece.
Along with re-purposed zips I have used fabric from an evening dress cut into weavable strips. This piece not only uses unusual materials but also asks the question:
“Were women ‘zipped up’ before emancipation?”
In seeking a voice, they became strong working together to fight for the right to be heard, and to vote.
Karyn McCullough
Dressed To Kill
Shotgun cases, guest artist, NFS
I always said ‘One day I will make a wearable art dress for the Taranaki Fashion Art (TFA) show.’ My daughter, Melissa, immediately volunteered to be my model.
About eight years ago, I decided to start collecting shotgun cases to support my idea. It had to be this year or never as I lose my model to university in 2019 and my son said ‘Well I’m not doing it!’
After a lot of thought, I began trialling, discovering this was going to be harder than first thought!
I had to make a wooden cradle for the metal tops to be placed in and then drilled. Drilling straight through broke drill bits on the primer, so I had to drill from the inside out, on either side, and then each drill hole had to be filed smooth. My family helped me colour code, file and remove primers!
I threaded the metal tops on four strands of nylon and began the laborious task of sewing them on. As it got heavier, and I ached from bending over it, my husband screwed a big hook in the ceiling for me to hang it off!
So after 3000 cases, and 200 hours of sewing (usually into the early hours) my creation emerged. Off with my family to The TFA awards and what an amazing night as we won our Recycled Section and came Supreme Runner-Up over all.