OF TWO MINDS Joanna Fieldes & Marilyn Murphy
Hangar Gallery
16th Oct-13th Nov 2026

Joanna Fieldes Artist Statement

"With my artwork whether it be an oil painting or print through printmaking and/or hand-colouring a print, I want to stimulate and capture the viewer's mind, cause hesitation, so that my artworks have a better chance at being looked at, being seen again. I like to evoke thoughts and contemplation, awaken the mind, perhaps with a twist of humour or fate”.

My work articulates serious narratives, that can be provocative bringing to life New Zealand's past and present. Often, I juxtapose a tableau of ceramic-like vessels, sometimes in anthropomorphic guise, to represent both the immigrants ‘colonizers’ and indigenous found within a typical New Zealand landscape. The vessels dominate my work as unique containers, bearing links to our past, the present and future. With a strong focus on relationships and interactions, that concern the social and physical state of being, while at the same time navigating life, through our unique differences.

I am always mindful of my ancestors; early colonial settlers who attempted to create a ‘Little England’ on these shores, through their endeavours to settle, they tamed the land, farmed, and some preached Christianity. They planted ‘seeds’, figurately and literally, good and bad, impacting on our world today and the future.