Joanna Margaret Paul, Durie Hill Tower, undated, pencil, ink and watercolour on paper.
These paintings take the form of a frieze
Their subject is interior change
They are imagined in the context of a room.
Joanna Margaret Paul, 1973
Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery is pleased to finally present the major exhibition, Joanna Margaret Paul: Imagined in the context of a room.
A project that has been developed and led by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery with the Sarjeant Gallery as project partner, the exhibition was curated by me with Lucy Hammonds and Lauren Gutsell of Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
Joanna Margaret Paul (1945-2003) was an artist who had a long association with the Sarjeant Gallery after moving with her three children to Whanganui in 1985.
In 1989, she had her first survey exhibition, A Chronology, at the Sarjeant and her involvement with the gallery continued with other exhibitions, and also in her engagement with the gallery’s public programmes, until her passing in 2003.
Te Whare o Rehua has rich holdings of Paul’s works, many of which have a strong local connection through their content, such as series entitled Plato’s Cave/Whanganui River and Skyline (1987), with each being poetic studies in pencil and coloured pencil of familiar scenes of the awa and Pukenamu.
“Imagined in the context of a room” presents a close study of Paul’s career and considers the resonance and legacy of her work in our contemporary time.
Across a creative practice spanning more than three decades, Paul navigated her work within the context and the concept of a room. A room of the heart, the mind, the spirit; a room of one’s own. Built upon the foundation of an intense responsiveness to the world around her, Paul’s art asserted the legitimacy and importance of lived experience, particularly the experiences of women as subject matter.
She celebrated the “ordinary” and the “minor”, she rejected trends and hierarchies, and she trusted how the world appeared from her point of view. “Imagined in the context of a room” presents a close study of Paul’s career and considers the resonance and legacy of her work in our contemporary time.
For Paul, the home offered an environment where objects, places and people acted as markers of memory, identity, domestic life, relationships and time. The interior was not only a space where art and life lived, but it was also connected to the landscape and viewed in relation to it.
As both a publication and exhibition, this project (which opened at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2021 and subsequently toured to Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu and City Gallery Wellington, Te Whare Toi) gathers together the diffuse strands of Paul’s creative practice and reflects the intersections and divergences between the significant body of experimental film, drawing, painting, photography and poetry that were left behind at the time of her death.
Moving across the different phases of Paul’s life as an artist, the exhibition traces key journeys that shaped the artist’s career: from Ōtepoti Dunedin to Banks Peninsula to Whanganui, between the mind, body and spirit; and between presence and absence.
Although many of Paul’s artworks can be seen as autobiographical, after moving to Whanganui new concerns came into focus that were less present within her practice. Issues such as architectural preservation and genetic engineering became consuming focuses, but were often expressed through means other than the visual arts.
Paul was a key part of Whanganui’s creative community and is still remembered fondly by those who knew her.
Paul’s work has often been described as ethereal, tentative or fragile, her legacy has only become more certain over the past 22 years, her lines more deliberate, assertive and expansive. Her work continues to resonate a quiet energy and wonderful resonance with the beauty of the everyday world.
Greg Donson is senior curator and programmes manager at Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery.