Gisborne artist Steph Mary Barnett is having her first solo exhibition called Love Your Blood on Friday. It features a mix of animation, painting and illustration and an installation made out of hundreds of daisy chains. Photo / Luke Gordon
Gisborne artist Steph Mary Barnett is having her first solo exhibition called Love Your Blood on Friday. It features a mix of animation, painting and illustration and an installation made out of hundreds of daisy chains. Photo / Luke Gordon
A new exhibition Love Your Blood by Gisborne artist Steph Mary Barnettopens on Friday celebrating cycles of transformation and the importance of lineage.
Visitors will be greeted by an installation created out of hundreds of daisy chains suspended from a corrugated steel ceiling, transforming a workplace into amagical space.
From there, they will move to a second floor where animations are projected on to translucent silk fabric.
In a third room, there are collaborative works and paintings, including painted postcards Steph makes for her grandmother.
“I paint one every week and send them to her in Tauranga. My brother sends her postcards too and it means the world to her.
“I wanted to bring Grandma some joy and be held accountable to maintaining a consistent art practice. Nobody wants to let down their grandma,” Barnett said.
The exhibition reflected her multi-disciplinary practice and her consistent use of flora and fauna to describe aspects of the human experience and celebrate growth and transformation.
In her first solo exhibition Love Your Blood artist Steph Mary Barnett is projecting her animations onto sheer silk fabric. Photo / Luke Gordon
Love Your Blood is Barnett’s first solo exhibition, a way of giving back to the Tairāwhiti community that has supported her artistic pursuits.
She acknowledged her partner Luke Gordon and his dad Paul who lent her the space at their horticultural contracting business O.T.T. Crop Protectors on Saleyards Rd.
“I like that my work is so feminine, but it’s in a very masculine setting. I want everyone to feel welcome engaging in this work.”
The work responsible for the title Love Your Blood was created in 2019. It is suspended from the rafters of a massive workshop, which can be viewed from an upstairs room.
“This work references menstruation, so I love that it is hung above where all the men have worked for years. It created balance and invites us all into the same space.”
Barnett didn’t think of herself as an artist until around 2019 when she set herself a task of making $100 a day through her art for 100 days.
Before that she had worked as an educator specialising in trauma-informed education.
“I suffered from burnout and depression and had to go to Wellington to stay with my parents while I recovered. That was the hardest experience I’ve ever had and also the one that I’m most grateful for,” she said.
A final print run of a painting of a pūriri moth called Out of the Darkness will be sold at the exhibition, with the profits going to Talk Peach - a gynaecological cancer awareness charity.
“The community may recognise this piece as it was a collaborative effort created over a year with anybody that I could goad into holding a paintbrush,” she said.
Some of the pieces were made in an autobiographical way, allowing her to process and reflect on her own experiences.
“I want the viewer to create their own story and connection with this work.”
Other pieces more directly speak to the viewer and ask something quite specific of them.
“For example, a bouquet of flowers is typically ‘normal’ to paint and is considered beautiful but look closely at one of my pieces and it shows aspects of people’s lives that have historically been considered taboo, ‘dirty’ or not ‘normal’ to paint [in a western context].”
Her intention was to find the cross-section between the everyday, the profound and the taboo.
“It’s an autobiographical celebration of being and a gift back to the community who have supported me so well as an artist. As my first solo exhibition, it also lays an important stepping stone for my future and the way I want to move forward with my work.”
The band MASH (Brandan Letham, Josh Cambell and John Aitken) will be playing for the opening drinks before a kōrero from Naomi Simmonds and a walkthrough of the show.
Barnett also wants to give thanks to Creative Communities Scheme and GDC, Evolution theatre, ESMA furniture design by Sam Reckas, Everyday Pantry food by Maz, Ellen Mary Taylor Photo and Film, Deep Bleu Signs, Sunshine brewery and Matawhero wines.
