<MIQ, Christchurch /settling in, Invercargill>

The installation fitting in <MIQ, Christchurch /settling in, Invercargill> with of 26 photographs from the fitting in archive, received the Supreme Award at the ILT Art Awards 2021.

“Sophisticated and complex, this evening’s supreme award-winning work is conceptually and creatively rigorous. Fusing performance, installation and image-making, liminal urban settings play host to disruptive acts. The artwork exploits the inherent pathos of overlooked spaces to absurdist effect but underpins this with an interrogation of how we occupy the commons. The subject of the images is both present and absent: anonymous and clothed in a non-colour, the body we see does not strictly inhabit these in-between places, but appears subsumed into them.”

Judge’s comment, Lisa Wilkie, ILT Art Awards 2021

I kept being drawn back to this work watching the looping reel of still images again and again, each time noticing new details and confirming what I had seen the first time. Through a carefully crafted minimal approach to colour and an intense exploration of composition, this work picks up on conversations located in modernist painting dialogues. The picture plane is partially flattened and compositional centers are pushed to their limits, at times almost out of the frame. The artist uses her own body, dressed in black, as a visual counterweight in these images, often stretching it to its physical limits. And, they are funny, she uses humour to engage with the inherent depression of the beige hotel room interior - MIQ Christchurch and the predominantly grey semi-abandoned urban spaces of Invercargill. The poses activate what could otherwise be gratuitous banality into delightful absurdity. 

Judge’s comment, Hannah Joynt, ILT Art Awards 2021