In 2012, Lysaght gifted Trifecta to Te Manawa because she considered it pertinent to Manawatū and in memory of her maternal grandfather, who used to breed racehorses in Marton.
She says looking at old work makes her nervous because she immediately hones in on mistakes.
Her other exhibition, Kutarere Sunrise, is a tribute to her father, Nelson Lysaght, who was a butcher at Kutarere near Ōpōtiki. As a girl, Lysaght went to her father's shop every day to get a parcel of meat to feed all the stray cats in the neighbourhood.
One day, when she was about 18 months, and wearing red corduroy overalls, her father was busy mincing meat and she fell into a vat of meat. Nelson picked her up by the overall straps, not initially realising he was about to put his daughter through the mincer. This experience inspired her mixed-media banner 200 Ways With Mince.
Each Friday, Lysaght would help prepare the RSA meat raffle - presentation was important and her job was to put the parsley on top. Nelson had been a prisoner of war and the RSA was important to him.
Kutarere Sunrise uses fabric to create butcher's tools and products. For the meat choppers she chose bright textured fabrics rather than the traditional grey because she can't stand the deary grey world around at the moment. Textured fabrics turn her on.
Lysaght says she is an obsessive maker and doesn't know what she would do if she couldn't make. She remembers as a girl using chalk to decorate walls as she roller-skated past and turning shoeboxes into stage sets.
If someone told her she couldn't make any more she thinks it would do her head in.
Lysaght is self-taught, having not been to art school. She never thought she would be an artist. Growing up she did not have artistic role models, but fortunately had an art teacher who insisted she consider it as a career.
She combines recycled materials and social consciousness, seriousness and humour in her work, which she creates from a tiny sun porch at her home. She enjoys taking found materials and giving them new life; as an artist she lives very frugally.
Lysaght used to do a lot of community art, motivated by the belief art must go outside white walls.
She taught art at Arohata Women's Prison in Wellington. Art was considered a luxury there but it was sanity for the women. She enjoyed seeing the women coming into class and something opening up to them, something they had never thought of doing.
The details
What: Kutarere Sunrise / Trifecta
When: Until November 21
Where: Te Manawa Art Gallery
Entry: Free
