JOANNA BRAITHWAITE

April 30th - May 25th, 2011

1. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Decoy (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 600 x 702 x 21 mm

2. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Touch Wood (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 600 x 700 x 21 mm

2. DETAIL VIEW JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Touch Wood (2011)

3. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Going South (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 602 x 700 x 21 mm

4. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Shackled (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 600 x 702 x 21 mm

DETAIL VIEW JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Shackled (2011)

5. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Beauty Trap (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 600 x 702 x 21 mm

6. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Old Timer (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 602 x 702 x 21 mm

5. DETAIL VIEW JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Beauty Trap (2011)

7. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Returning Point (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 602 x 700 x 21 mm

8. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Hen's Teeth (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 600 x 702 x 21 mm

8. DETAIL VIEW JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Hen's Teeth (2011)

9. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Charmed Life (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 600 x 703 x 21 mm

10. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Lost Time (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 600 x 702 x 21 mm

9. DETAIL VIEW JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Charmed Life (2011)

11. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Fight Night (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 602 x 702 x 21 mm

12. JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Bad Rap (2011) oil on canvas, stretcher (v x h x d): 600 x 700 x 21 mm

DETAIL VIEW JOANNA BRAITHWAITE, Fight Night (2011)

In the exhibition “Hen’s Teeth” Joanna Braithwaite presents portraits of birds and links them to human attributes and preoccupations in her characteristic anthropomorphic manner.

Her works, as always, are visual riddles. She uses paradox, contradiction, irony and the narrative power of parable to engage the viewer directly. Her paintings use the power of gaze to arrest, ask and question. A conversation begins, which is a mix of dream, political, social, religious and environmental discourse. Braithwaite invents and amends, alters and applies an essential strangeness to what’s going on. What at first might seem simple or deliberately underdone, is revealed as imbued with content beyond appearance. Complexity arises.

In “Touch Wood” a necklace hangs, rosary-like, in front of a kereru’s breast and there sits a crucifix. Is this a story of love, hope or death? All these things? In “Beauty Trap” a peacock is chained by its beauty. In “Bad Rap” a kea dolefully looks back, its neck adorned with rap jewellery and its reputation as a thief. From a penguin hangs a compass (“Going South”), an albatross is adorned with a shark’s tooth, a studded collar completes the punk-like persona of a crowned hen.

Braithwaite explores tensions between fact and fiction, between traditional portraiture and humour, between the unique and endangered and ubiquitous. Cultural dynamics, social mores and values enter each painting. A gap between a collective subconscious and daily behaviour is revealed. A paradise duck sports a bullet necklace, a pukeko a chain watch, a morepork has the heavy metal references of a skull, a dagger, a padlock and a small animal hanging down.

EXHIBITION PRICELIST

JOANNA BRAITHWAITE

b.1962,livesSydney

Joanna Braithwaite juxtaposes objects, animals, humans and insects onto lavish painterly surfaces in unexpected and imaginative ways. She characteristically works in series and her immediate environment often prompts her subject matter. “Braithwaite’s work always contains figurative and realist elements but seldom without a twist which wrenches the work away from simple realism towards the surreal.” (1)

"Notions of progress and evolution, of sexual and natural selection, are seldom far from the surface of Braithwaite's paintings, whether they reference science lab or dog park." (2)

“Joanna Braithwaite’s fascination with the inversion of hierarchies and power structures and her preoccupation with testing the limits of what is considered human, raises wider issues of identity and authority. Her paintings prompt physical responses by means of psychological narratives, while projecting the spectator into realms where they must question the nature of their existence and their relationship with those around them. By these means her work also serves to make visible the processes by which power structures and hierarchies operate in contemporary society.” (3)

She has long been concerned with the interrelationship between humans and animals. Of her recent ‘Hover’ series she states “I decided to push this idea of an imbalance between man and beast further by considering the attributes of each. What if the balance was altered, and what if one species acquired some attribute of the other? I chose to paint a series of works where the human form was completely covered in creatures that could fly.” (4) “The placement of humans and creatures in midair, ascending, floating, or falling, deliberately deprives the viewer of reference points.” (5)

The 2003 ‘Wild Things’ and 2006 ‘All Sorts’ and ‘Avian Suite’ works continue the use of both the symbolic and metaphoric and Braithwaite adds explicit anthropomorphic characteristics to her creatures and animals. These animals have become performers – “a trapped consciousness” is implied. (6)

Braithwaite was born in Halifax, England in 1962 and came to New Zealand in 1965. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Canterbury in 1985 and was awarded the Ethel Rose Overton Scholarship in 1983, and the Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation Art Award in 1990. She was awarded merit prizes in the 1997 and 1998 Visa Gold Art Awards. Since 1999 she has lived and worked in Sydney and has held many solo exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia. She has work in many private and public collections in New Zealand, Australia and London including the Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Brisbane Public Art Gallery and the Dunmoochin Foundation in Melbourne. In 2005, her work was the subject of a major survey exhibition under the curation of Justin Paton (Dunedin Public Art Gallery) and Felicity Milburn (Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu). A survey catalogue of , ‘Wonderland – Joanna Braithwaite’ was published by Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery to accompany the survey exhibition.

1. Peter Simpson, ‘Pleasure Seeking and Surrealism’, Sunday Star Times, 19 August, 2001.

2. Gregory O'brien, 'Upwards and Onwards', Art New Zealand, Autumn, 2010

3. Lisa Beaven, ‘Taking Flight: The Airborne and Hybrid Images of Joanna Braithwaite’ Art New Zealand 102, Spring 2002.

4. Joanna Braithwaite quoted in Beaven, ibid

5. Beaven, ibid

6. Bridie Lonie, ‘The island of Dr Braithwaite’, NZ Listener, 23 April, 2005.

JOANNA BRAITHWAITE

b.1962,livesSydney

EDUCATION

1984 BFA, University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, New Zealand

1999-2000 MFA at College of Fine Arts, Sydney

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2011 Hen’s Teeth, Milford Galleries Dunedin

2010 Walk My Way, Bowen Galleries, Wellington

Born To Be Free, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

2008 Sealegs, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

2007 Animalia, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia

Animalia, La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre, Bendigo, Australia

Paintings 1995 – 2006, milford galleries auckland

2006 All Sorts, milford galleries auckland

2005 Selected Works, Milford Galleries Dunedin

Relative Moments, Brook/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

2005 Wonderland, touring exhibition; Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery

2004 Little Wonder, Brook/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

2003 Wild Things, milford galleries auckland

2003 Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney

2002 Paintings 2002, Bowen Galleries, Wellington

2001 Hover, milford galleries auckland

Menagerie Series, Brook/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

Spaces, milford galleries auckland

2000 Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney

1999 Paintings, Brook/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

Phenomena, Milford Galleries Dunedin

1998 Vicarious Relations, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney

1997 Nature of Beings, Brooker Gallery, Wellington

Ways of Being, Brook/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

1996 Darren Knight DKW, Melbourne

Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland

Brooker Gallery, Wellington

1995 Off Shore, Brook/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

1994 Darren Knight DKW, Melbourne

1993 Brooker Gallery, Wellington

1992 New Paintings, Brook/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

1991 Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland

1990 Paintings, Brook/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

Paintings, Brooker Gallery, Wellington

1989 Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland

1988 Paintings and Drawings, Brook/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

Paintings, Brooker Gallery, Wellington

1986 Beasts and Birds, Brook/Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

1984 Twelve Paintings, Six Drawings and Five Collages, C.S.A. Gallery Christchurch

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2009 Darren Knight Gallery at Auckland Art Fair, Auckland, New Zealand

2008 Wish you were here, Tweed River Art Gallery, New South Wales, Australia

The Year of the bird, Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, New South Wales, Australia

Who let the dogs out - the dog in contemporary Australian art, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery and Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, New South Wales, Australia

2007 Devils in Paradise, Bett Galley, Hobart

Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

2006 Braithwaite, Ellis and Harris, milford galleries auckland Object, Milford Galleries Duedin

Portia Geach Memorial Award, S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, Australia

Postcards from the Desert – Six artists on the Larapinta Trail, Damian Minton Gallery, Sydney, Australia

2005

Portia Geach Memorial Award, S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney, Australia

Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Chosen, Milford Galleries Dunedin

2004 The Menagerie: Animals in Art, Northart Community Arts Centre, Northcote, Auckland

2003-04

2003

Spiders & Flies, newcontempories, Sydney, Australia

Home Sweet Home: Works from the Peter Fay Collection, touring National Gallery of Australia,

Norsewear Art Awards, Guest Artist, Hastings, New Zealand

Overview: Notions of the Figurative, Milford Galleries Dunedin, New Zealand

2002 The Cloak - milford galleries auckland

2001 Leaping Boundaries, Mosman Art Gallery, Sydney, Australia PCL Exhibitionists, Sydney, Australia

2000 Canterbury Painting in the 1990’s, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

Paintings, Bowen Galleries, Wellington, New Zealand

Paintings, Milford Galleries, Dunedin, New Zealand

1999 Selected Works, Milford Galleries, New Zealand

1998 Group Show, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

Bulge, Brian Queenin Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand

Visa Gold Art Award, touring exhibition, New Zealand

1997 The Subject of Object, Milford House, Dunedin, New Zealand

Christmas Show, Gow Langsford, Auckland, New Zealand

Christmas Show, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

1996 Group Exhibition, Milford House, Dunedin, New Zealand

1994 Artists Eye IV, curated by Noel McKenna, Rex Irwin Art Dealer, Sydney, New Zealand

Ronnie, Barney, Shane, Jo and Mike, Darren Knight DKW, Melbourne, Australia

Small Works, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

1993 White Camelias, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

1992 Triplicate, Brooker Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand

Prospect Canterbury, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

Bermondsey Artist Summer Exhibition, London, England

Vanities, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

1991 Festival Exhibition, Brooker Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand

1989 Brooke Gifford Gallery, New Zealand

1988 Here and Now – twelve Young Canterbury Artists, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

The Painted Zoo, Shed 11, Wellington, New Zealand

Thirty Canterbury Artists, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

1987 Architecture Show, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru, New Zealand

1986 Women’s Exhibition, CSA Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

1985 Christmas Show, CSA Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

Christmas Show, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand

AWARDS

2001 Roche Prize, PCL Exhibitions, Sydney Australia

1999 Art Excellence Award, Christchurch Community Trust, New Zealand

1998 Merit, Visa Art Award, New Zealand

1997 Merit, Visa Art Award, New Zealand

1991 Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Award, New Zealand

1990 Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation Art Award, New Zealand

1987 Major Project Grant, QE II Arts Council, New Zealand

1985 New Artists Promotion Grant, QE II Arts Council, New Zealand

1983 Ethel Rose Overton Scholarship, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

1983 Sawtell Turner Painting Prize, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

COLLECTIONS

Aignantighe Art Gallery, Timaru

Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch

Fletcher Challenge Collection, Auckland

Lincoln University, Canterbury College House Collection, Christchurch

James Wallace Collection, Auckland

Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch

Brisbane Public Art Gallery, Australia

Dunmoochin Foundation, Melbourne

University of Canterbury Library Collection, Christchurch

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agnew, Margaret, Brush with Oz, The Press, May 29, 2002

Amery, Mark, Disturbing calendar images, The Evening Post, 4 September 1997 Award puts gloss on artist’s career, Christchurch Star, 20 October 1989

Awards on show, The Press, 28 August 1998

Banbury, Grant, Joanna Braithwaite: interview with Grant Banbury, Takahe 33, Christchurch, August 1998

Barr, G, Intelligent offerings at art gallery, Christchurch Star, 27 July 2005

Barry, Clare, The Press, 31 October 1990

Beaven, Lisa, Taking Flight: The Airborne and Hybrid Images of Joanna Braithwaite, Art New Zealand, Issue Number 102, Spring 2002

Blundell, S. Arts Section front page, The Press, 20 July 2005.

Brown, Warwick, 100 New Zealand Paintings, Godwit Publishing Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand, 1995 Burgess, Malcolm, Running Wild Across Gene Pools, New Zealand Herald, 12 November 2003

Dunbar, Anna, Art that soars, The Press, 8 December 1999

Frazer, Neil, An Uncomfortable Empathy, Takahe 33, Christchurch, New Zealand, August 1998

Fortescue, E. Joanna Braithwaite, Artist Profile, Issue 9. 2009

Hart, Deborah Home Sweet Home: an artist-collector’s passion, Home Sweet Home: Works from thePeter Fay collection, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia

Hawley, J. Welcome to my world, Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend p. 30

Hay, Jennifer, The Collections: Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Christchurch, 2003

Hurrell, John Braithwaite paintings, The Press, 12 March 1996 Jackson, Penelope and Strongman, Lara, White Camellias: a century of Womens Art Making, Robert McDougall

Art Gallery, Christchurch, 1993

Levine, Brett, (Re)Visioning the Real, Lopdell House Gallery, Auckland 1998

Lonie, B. The island of Dr Braithwaite, New Zealand Listener, 23-29 April, 2005

Lorimer, Wayne Beyond Realism, The Press, 29 July 1998

Low, Lenny Ann, Wonderworld, Sydney Morning Herald, 10-11 May 2003

Critic's Picks, Sydney Morning Herald, 9-15 May, 2003

Lowe, Robert, What Kiwi Artists Saw in Australia, The Daily News, 18 June 2001

Milburn, F. and Pepperle, S. Wonderland – The beastly world of Joanna Braithwaite, Bulletin, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Runa O Waiwhetu, Winter June-August 2005

McDonald, J. Daydreams who bite back, The Sydney Morning Herald, 3-4 December 2005

McDonald, J. Reflections of us, The Sydney Morning Herald, October 22-23, 2005

McHugh, Michael, Opposites Attract, FQ Entertaining, Winter 1998

McNamara, T.J. Ritchie Enlivens Week of Basics, New Zealand Herald, 17 August 1989

JoannaBraithwaite2011CV

Curious Imagery Creates Odd Puzzles, The Press, 12 November 2003

Moore, C. Visual Arts, The Press, 23 July 2005

O’Brien, G. Joanna Braithwaite’s “Wonderland” , Australian Art Review, September 2005.

O’Brien, G “Upwards and Onwards”, Art New Zealand, Autumn 2010, #133, p 24 – 27

Paton, Justin, Joanna Braithwaite, The Press, 18 November 1992

Paton, Justin, Magic realism at sea, The Press, 7 June 1995

Pauli, Dorothee, Bizarre whimsies, The Press, 12 September 2001

Rewi, Adrienne ‘Painter’s Ways of Being’, The Press, 9 July 1997

Simpson, Peter, Pleasure seeking and surrealism, Sunday Star-Times, 26 August 2001

Slade, Colin, Art for more than just art’s sake, The Press, 5 May 1997

3rd Major Survey: Modern Art in New Zealand, Milford Galleries, Dunedin, 1997

Taylor, Rob, Smith’s Half-painting in Fresco Style, The Dominion, 5 December 1990

Timms, P. Artnotes, Art Monthly Australia, September 2007 #203 p.50

Ussher, Robyn, Free and flighty, The Press, 8 December 1999

Commanding Impasto Links Humans, Animals, The Press, 9 July 1997

Unger, Pat, Paintings, Drawings, The Press, 26 October 1988

Group Show, The Press

Exhibitions: Christchurch, Art New Zealand 59, Winter 1991

Exhibitions: Christchurch, Art New Zealand 65, Summer 1992

Were, Virginia, A Second Noah’s Ark, Art New New Zealand, Summer 2004

Weston, Tom, Passion and Responsibility: The Paintings of Joanna Braithwaite, Art New Zealand 56, 1989

The Ambiguous Companion, Hazard Press, 1996 (with illustrations by Joanna Braithwaite)

Naming the Mind Like Trees, (paintings by Joanna Braithwaite), Steele Roberts Ltd. Wellington, New Zealand 2004

Wood, Andrew Paul, Unnatural history, New Zealand Listener, 16-22 October 2004, pp.42-3

Beauty Trap (2011)