13 November 2019 – 16 February 2020
Ground Floor Galleries
The Wallace Arts Trust is proud to host this major show of the work of pre-eminent New Zealand artist Jacqueline Fahey. The exhibition, created by The New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata and curated by Jaenine Parkinson and Kirsty Baker, travels to Auckland and will be shown at the Pah Homestead from 13 November 2019 to 16 February 2020.
Jacqueline Fahey has focused on representing the people in her life for over seven decades. Resisting the ‘man alone’ trope of formal portraiture, Fahey’s art instead focuses on the network of relationships that define us.
Moving from the domestic vantage point of a young mother, out into the streets and skateparks of Aotearoa New Zealand, Fahey offers a portrait of suburbia and its inhabitants that is at once oppressive and joyous, brimming with both conflict and love.
Fahey’s paintings allow us to look back with nostalgia at familiar scenes: birthday parties, dinner parties and preparations for school balls. They also look outwards, posing more difficult questions. As our suburbs rapidly change, becoming more diverse and more gentrified her emotionally complex depictions of the people of suburbia continue to strike a contemporary chord.
This survey exhibition takes stock of Fahey’s significant contribution to New Zealand’s art history. In this, her 90th year, Jacqueline Fahey’s Suburbanites is a riotous celebration of her love of people and paint.
Jacqueline Fahey, The Birthday Party, 1974, Oil on board, Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection.
Jacqueline Fahey, My Skirt's in Your Fucking Room!, 1981, Collection William Dart, Auckland.
