JOANNA BRAITHWAITE

1. Top Tip (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1120 x 1117 x 25 mm

2. Luminary (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1122 x 1122 x 25 mm

3. Curiosity (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1120 x 1124 x 25 mm

oil on canvas, stretcher: 1118 x 1118 x 25 mm

4. Silent Partner (2012)

5. Stud (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1124 x 1120 x 25 mm

6. Highly Decorated (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 1123 x 1123 x 25 mm

7. Size Matters (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 612 x 610 x 22 mm

8. Curiosity (The Study) (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 610 x 610 x 22 mm

9. Light Keeper (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 615 x 613 x 22 mm

10. Bookie (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 602 x 602 x 22 mm

11. As Luck Would Have It (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 614 x 614 x 22 mm

12. Highly Decorated (The Study) (2012) oil on canvas, stretcher: 602 x 602 x 22 mm

The ‘sitters’ in Joanna Braithwaite’s portraits in her exhibition “Goes Without Saying” stare out at the viewer with expressions that range from haughty selfimportance (Luminary) to bemused resignation (As Luck Would Have it). Each creature in Braithwaite’s menagerie is bedecked with accessories that suit their station in life. The melancholic air of the Huia is enhanced by Victorian mourning brooches; with betting slips tucked into their tweed hats, knowing equine glances suggest that the horses have had the inside running all along.

The heroism of "Private Simpson and his little beast” (1) on the beaches of Gallipoli is part of ANZAC history and with Silent Partner Braithwaite acknowledges the unnamed animal. Her donkey, complete with medic’s “slouch hat,” gazes out of the painting with quiet dignity. A finalist in the 2012 Gallipoli Art Prize in Sydney, Silent Partner exemplifies Braithwaite’s skill. She paints with a confident hand and deftly captures the essential form and expression of her subject. The backgrounds of her paintings are left blank, but not empty; the rich, subtly shaded backdrops throw the animals into the spotlight.

Through use of the formal strictures of traditional portrait painting, Braithwaite confers status on her rats, birds and rabbits: they are the ones “immortalised in oils.” Normal hierarchies of viewed and viewer, animal and human, the celebrated and the ordinary are turned upside down. Displaying easily recognisable markers of class and status, the members of Braithwaite’s menagerie occupy established societal niches, inviting us to question the validity and roles of our social signifiers and structures.

1. Colonel Jack Monash, quoted in “Australia’s Favourite Hero,” http://www.anzacs.net/Simpson.htm, accessed 5/7/12

JOANNA BRAITHWAITE

b. 1962, lives Sydney

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 ‘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 mid-air, 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 went on to complete a MFA at College of Fine Arts, Sydney in 2000. She was awarded the Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation Art Award in 1990, merit prizes in the Visa Gold Art Awards (1997 & 1998), has been a finalist in the Australian Archibald and Sulman Art Awards and in 2006 was runner-up in the Australian Portia Geach Art Award. Since 1999 she has lived in Sydney and has held many solo exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia. 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). In 2011 Jenny Bornholdt and Greg O'Brien curated a further survey exhibition Significant Others which opened at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery and toured to the Sarjeant Gallery. Braithwaite has work in many private and public collections in New Zealand, Australia and the UK.

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.

EDUCATION

JOANNA BRAITHWAITE

b. 1962, lives Sydney

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

1999-2000 MFA at College of Fine Arts, Sydney

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2012 Goes Without Saying, milford galleries queenstown

2011 Pecking Order, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia

Significant Others, New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Wellington; Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui Hen’s Teeth, Milford Galleries Dunedin

2010 Walk My Way, Bowen Galleries, Wellington

Born To Be Free, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

2009 About Time, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia

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, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

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

2004 Little Wonder, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

2003 Wild Things, milford galleries auckland

Relative Moments, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia

2002 Paintings 2002, Bowen Galleries, Wellington

2001 Hover, milford galleries auckland

Menagerie Series, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

Spaces, milford galleries auckland

2000 Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia

1999 Paintings, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

Phenomena, Milford Galleries Dunedin

1998 Vicarious Relations, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, Australia

1997 Nature of Beings, Brooker Gallery, Wellington

Ways of Being, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

1996 Darren Knight DKW, Melbourne, Australia

Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland

Brooker Gallery, Wellington

1995 Off Shore, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

1994 Darren Knight DKW, Melbourne, Australia

1993 Brooker Gallery, Wellington

1992 New Paintings, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

1991 Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland

1990 Paintings, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

Paintings, Brooker Gallery, Wellington

1989 Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland

1988 Paintings and Drawings, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

Paintings, Brooker Gallery, Wellington

1986 Beasts and Birds, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

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

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2012 The Surreal, Milford Galleries Dunedin

Gallipoli Art Prize, Gallipoli Club, Sydney, Australia

Voice of Art 3: For the Love of Animals, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia

2011 PARALLEL, Milford Galleries Dunedin

Sydney’s Contested Landscapes, Customs House Square, Sydney, Australia

Australia Day Exhibition, Tim Olsen Gallery, Sydney, Australia

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

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

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, Australia

2006

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

Braithwaite, Ellis and Harris, milford galleries auckland Object, Milford Galleries Dunedin

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

Overview: Notions of the Figurative, Milford Galleries Dunedin

2002 The Cloak - milford galleries auckland

2001

2000

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

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

Paintings, Bowen Galleries, Wellington

Paintings, Milford Galleries, Dunedin

1999 Selected Works, Milford Galleries Dunedin

1998 Group Show, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

Bulge, Brian Queenin Gallery, Wellington

Visa Gold Art Award, touring exhibition, New Zealand

1997

The Subject of Object, Milford Galleries Dunedin

Christmas Show, Gow Langsford, Auckland

Christmas Show, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

1996 Group Exhibition, Milford Galleries Dunedin

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

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

Small Works, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

1993 White Camelias, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch

1992 Triplicate, Brooker Gallery, Wellington

Prospect Canterbury, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch

Bermondsey Artist Summer Exhibition, London, England

Vanities, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch

1991 Festival Exhibition, Brooker Gallery, Wellington

1989 Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

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

The Painted Zoo, Shed 11, Wellington

Thirty Canterbury Artists, Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch

1987 Architecture Show, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

1986

Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru

Women’s Exhibition, CSA Gallery, Christchurch

1985 Christmas Show, CSA Gallery, Christchurch Christmas Show, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Christchurch

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

Aigantighe Art Gallery, Timaru Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna O Waiwhetu Fletcher Challenge Collection, Auckland Lincoln University, Canterbury College House Collection, Christchurch James Wallace Collection, Auckland 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 the Peter 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 Women’s 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

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 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