Profile

Joanna Fieldes - New Zealand Artist

Joanna Fieldes

Joanna Fieldes (NZ, born 1959)

Joanna Fieldes is an artist with a uniquely surreal vision of her country and culture, unencumbered by conventional modes of representation. Successfully exhibiting in solo, joint and group shows in public and private galleries around New Zealand since her first solo show in Auckland in 2004, Joanna has developed a distinctively resonant style of her own.

Through her oil paintings, Joanna articulates ambiguous narratives characterised by her signature infusion of pervasive menace with gentle humour, bringing to life her farm-bred view of New Zealanders’ uneasy relationship with the land. A dominant theme throughout Joanna’s body of work is the continuing impact of New Zealand’s colonial past on both its varied landscapes and the life forms, indigenous and introduced, that inhabit them.

Joanna recasts early confrontations between native New Zealanders and Europeans in playful yet compelling ways. Arranged in tense tableaux staged against opalescent vistas, imported ceramic vessels in anthropomorphic guise totter about sparsely populated New Zealand landscapes like so many domesticated vehicles for the artist’s wry meditations on environmental sustainability. Toby jug naval officers come face to face with canopic jar tribal chiefs, while egg cup and milk jug kiwi and magpies, each wittily decorated with heraldic signifiers of indigenous or exotic flora, square off against one another like chess pieces locked in diplomatic stalemate. Meanwhile, inscrutable rabbits overrun deforested landscapes, hiding in plain view.

In Joanna Fieldes’ paintings, domestic vessels thus operate as humorous metaphors for the seething tensions and thinly veiled aggression that can lurk beneath the surface of formal encounters, along with the unending struggle to contain those invasive pests that threaten to overwhelm our native species as well as our rural economies. Barely contained within her multi-panel canvases, they represent containers of colonial culture as well as both colonizers and colonized: containers of history linking past and present.

Born: 1959, (née Abraham), Feilding, New Zealand

Lives: Auckland

EXHIBITIONS:

2019 Franklin Arts Festival, received 1st prize in the Printmaking section with 'Meat in the Middle', 2019,V/P 8/10 drypoint/monoprint, oil ink

2019 Intersect, 11th May-22nd June, exhibition of new works by members of artists collective 'left-field', at Papakura Art Gallery.

2017 Cast of Mind - Solo Exhibition, Papakura Art Gallery

2015 Potters and Painters Group Show - The Vivian Gallery - collaboration with ceramic artist Fran Maguire

2015 Selected for The New Zealand Painting and Printmakers Award, 2015 - Waikato Society of Arts

2014 The Spine of the Land / Te ua o Te Whenua, Papakura Art Gallery. The artists work included in this exhibition are: Joyce Campbell / Dawn Harris / Priscilla Cowie / Yvonne Rust / Sue Treanor / Joanna Fieldes / Rodney Fumpston / Amelia Hitchcock / Don Binney / Haruhiko Sameshima / Sarah Smuts-Kennedy / Delena Nathuran / Belinda Griffiths / A.D.Schierning / John Pusateri / Will Ngakura / Greer Twiss / Bing Dawe / Simon Kaan / Denise Batchelor / The Kauri Project Postcards

2014 Seeing the Landscape: New Views, group show curated by Emma Topping, Uxbridge Arts

2014 Autumn Show - Joanna Fieldes & Toss Woollaston - The Gallery at Woollaston, Nelson

2014 Containment - Joint exhibition with ceramic artist Fran Maguire - The Gallery at Woollaston, Nelson
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2013 Selected for The New Zealand Painting and Printmakers Award, 2013 - Waikato Society of Arts

2012 Guest artist, 60th Annual Spring Show, Anderson Park Gallery, Invercargill

2012 Claim to Clay - Red Exposure, joint exhibition with ceramic artist Fran Maguire, Red Art Gallery, Nelson

2011 Claim to Clay II, joint exhibition with ceramic artist Fran Maguire, Millennium Public Art Gallery, Blenheim

2011 Animal Incarnations, Papakura Art Gallery. Exhibition curated by Tracey Williams. The works of the following artists were included: Joanna Braithwaite, Bonnie Crickett, John Eaden, Katrina Edwards, Joanna Fieldes, Andrea Gaskin, Michael Harrison, Eyelyn Kawiti, Gregor Kregar, Hye Rim Lee, Jeff Lockhart, Peter Madden, Emma McLellan, Richard Orjis, Hamish Palmer, Niamh Peren, Aleksandra Petrovic and Grant Whibley.

2011 About Face, aspects of portraiture, Papakura Art Gallery. Exhibition curated by Rhoda Fowler. The works of the following artists were included: Martin Ball, Octavia Cook, Jacqueline Fahey, Joanna Fieldes, Gavin Hurley, Damien Kurth, Mary McIntyre, Sam Mitchell, Zarahn Southon, Sally Tagg, Ann Verdcourt, Haihui Wang and Tracey Williams

2010 Claim to Clay, joint exhibition with ceramic artist Fran Maguire, Auckland Botanic Gardens, Visitor Centre Huakaiwaka, Auckland

2009 Finalist in the James Wallace Award

2008 The painting 'Casserole' was included in the Manukau City Council Axis: Selected works

exhibition, as part of the Manukau Festival of Arts 08.The painting is part of the Manukau City art collection

2007 Painting 'Headland', 2006, included in Whangarei Art Museum/ Outreach Gallery, Kauri Festival,‘Tears for Tanes Children' exhibition

Paintings feature in 'Celebrate Art Resources' pack which can be obtained from

www.integratededucation.com

2006 ‘Gravy’, Solo exhibition, OREX GALLERY (Oedipus Rex Gallery), Auckland

2005 Painting 'The Offering', 2003, was included in the significant KIWI, Group exhibition,Rotorua Museum of Art and History

Group Show, Koro lounge, International Airport

Commissioned painting, 'Gentian Connection', 2004, was officially presented to

Prince Akishinomiya and Princess Kiko (members of the Japanese Royal family).

2004 ‘Food for Thought’, Solo show, Ardor Gallery, Parnell

2003 ‘The Drama of the Seen’, Group show, Ardor Gallery

2001 ‘Art for Collection’, Joint show, Papakura Art Gallery

2000 ‘Art for Collection’, Joint show, Papakura Art Gallery

1999 ‘Just a Country Girl at Heart’, Taylor-Jensen Fine Arts Gallery, Palmerston North

joint Show, Papakura Art Gallery

1998 ‘Sacred Sheep’, Solo show, Gallery 16, Kumeu

Highly Commended, Ida Eise Award, ASA (painting titled 'Politics with Attitude')

Commendation Award at the Iris Fisher selected works exhibition, Pakuranga Art Society

Fisher Gallery (paintings titled 'Crown Roast 2')

1997 Finalist in the Nola Holmwood Trust for Portrait Painting Award

Guest artist for the biennial Eketahuna Art Exhibition

1994 Solo show, Old Firehouse Gallery, Waipu

Public Gallery Exhibitions:

2014 Seeing the Landscape: New Views, group show curated by Emma Topping, Malcolm Smith Gallery - Uxbridge Arts

2013 'How Iconic', group show curated by Emma Topping, Malcolm Smith Gallery - Uxbridge Arts