11 August – 2 October
Exhibition Opening: Wednesday 10 August, 6pm
Galleries: Master Bedroom, Boardroom and Little Gallery
Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett QSM is an artist who is an outspoken voice on social issues that have shaped our nation's identity over 70 years of change, addressing waves of feminism and institutional patriarchy, tackling the shame of apartheid, and inspiring the Visual Artists Against Nuclear Arms movement (VAANA). Most recently her works touch upon global environmental concerns from the New Zealand perspective.
“I am exploring the ways by which a political art might again emerge in strength to help change people’s thinking, and therefore the course of our living history”
— Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett
Flawed Landscape With Lovers, 1998, Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett
This exhibition comprises a selection of works spanning from the 1950s up to the present, including works yet to be exhibited, from a prolific career involving almost 100 exhibitions and numerous public projects.
Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal for services to the NZ Anti-Nuclear Arms Movement and her role in initiating VAANA together with its associated public murals. She is a founding member of the NZ Association of Women Artists.
Untitled, 1956, Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett
“Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett is an artist whose place in Aotearoa’s art history will be remembered through her bold unmasking of our social history as a protest artist, and her introspective explorations of human consciousness, relationships, and survival, as seen and expressed, from a woman’s point of view.”
— Julian Harrison
Left: Untitled, 1978, Maragret Lawlor-Bartlett. Right: Self Portrait with Ruru and the Guns of North Head, 2012, Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett
ABOUT MARGARET
Auckland-based artist Margaret Lawlor-Bartlett was born 1929 in Wellington; the daughter of renowned journalist and writer Pat Lawlor. She trained as an art specialist teacher, Wellington Teachers' Training College; and studied at Elam from 1950-1953. Margaret was awarded the Elam Rosemary Grice Memorial prize in 1953, but left Elam in protest just prior to her final exams and travelled to Paris. During this period, she was Illustrator for her father Pat Lawlor's `Books and bookmen'. Margaret trained under Jean Metzinger and Andre Lhote in France from 1953-1957. She then attended St Martin's School of Art, London, 1969-1970. Margaret married the architect Peter Bartlett in 1953. Their six children have regularly featured as models in her paintings. She has been represented in many group and one-woman shows; and her work is in private collections in New Zealand, the USA, Australia, Denmark and France.
Margaret has been recognised for her social/environmental activism. She helped to establish the organisation VAANA (Visual Artists Against Nuclear Arms) in 1984. The VAANA mural from that period (digital replica later produced in 2018), on the corner of Karangahape and Ponsonby roads, exists today as major public art. Margaret worked for the North Shore Women’s Refuge Sculpture Projects from 1994 -2007. She was awarded QSM for her services to the Arts, notably the New Zealand Anti-Nuclear movement.
