Art imitating life imitating art
Waiheke Island-based artist Julia Holden is returning to Queenstown for the opening of her exhibition, The Artist, this Friday, and to join in on a panel discussion, The Power of Collaboration, on Saturday. She’ll be presenting a performance painting exhibition that brings visibility to artistic labour.
Holden’s background is in storyboard and set drawing for film and television. She moved to China and that’s when her focus shifted to fine art. She missed the collaborative aspect of filmmaking and soon developed her performance paintings.
“I was used to working with a big team of people and everybody is on top of their game, and you’re all working towards the same thing,” Holden says. “Whereas as a painter, you tend to be just with yourself in the studio. So I like to mix it up – I both work in oil paints and in this way, which I call performance paintings.”
Collaborating with cross-sector artists from the Queenstown Lakes District, who act as living canvases, she creates portraits fusing sculpture, performance and painting – living portraits. She paints the individuals as well as their clothing – even preparing it with gesso as she would a canvas. She will also head out to the shops in the days beforehand, getting ready by assembling the things to bring her paintings even more to life.
“They’re definitely a painting, but then they’re also a sculpture, and that’s the fantastic thing about them. I make the hair out of clay and turn them into a sort of sculpture painting. I’m making kind of a doppelganger that looks a little bit plastic, a little bit ceramic.”
The work looks almost like a photo that has been painted on top of, but it’s actually the other way around. As a viewer, it can be hard to decipher what exactly you’re looking at. The painting process itself takes Holden between 30 and 60 minutes – if there’s more people involved maybe a little longer.
“Generally, I try and keep it to a minimum so that it feels very fresh and very wet, and so it’s just, sort of, holding together, and the paint is going to completely melt away. And also, I don’t want it to be too arduous to be my portrait subject.”
The paintings that will be on display were painted over winter, when Holden spent two months here, collaborating with fellow artists. She’s building on a series of eight works that she made in Dunedin the winter before at the Dunedin School of Art.
“When we think of the word artist, that can often be a narrow definition. You immediately think of painters and sculptors, and photographers have been let into the room more laterally, but it’s much more than that. I’ve got a short list of 44 different occupations that come under the umbrella term artist.”
She wants to foreground the artists themselves and through the portrait, introduce people to the different artists’ practices. You’ll be sure to recognise a few different faces in the exhibition, which includes a breadsmith, some architects, and the Powder Chutes.
She explained that when doing the portraits it was a natural process of meeting people – one person recommended the next, who knew someone else. Part of Holden’s creative process involves doing some research and meeting the person she’s creating a portrait of.
“It literally comes out of the conversation because I ask them what might be the best way to represent their practice and what they do, because they want to include an element of that in the portrait. In some cases it can be approached with a sense of humour.”
Holden very much sees the work as a collaborative effort and is really looking forward to coming back down, both for the opening and the panel discussion where she will join Iconic New Zealand artists and storytellers Chelsea Winstanley ONZM, Dame Gaylene Preston and Dame Robin White to share their experiences of working together.
“I really, really appreciate the opportunity, which arose through Olivia Egerton. I arrived a week after Ruth, the incoming director, started and she probably didn’t know a whole lot of what was in store, but she was helpful in accommodating me. It’s been delightful.”
Julia’s exhibition, The Artist, will be on show at Te Atamira from Friday, 5 December until Saturday, 24 February. She’ll also be a part of a panel discussion, The Power of Collaboration, on Saturday, 6 December at 11am. Head to teatamira.nz for more information and to get tickets for the panel discussion.
