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Physical Traces, mapping with detail
September 2, 2023 @ 10:00 am – September 23, 2023 @ 4:00 pm
Physical Traces, mapping with detail
Janet Mazenier & Sarah Treadwell
2 – 23 September 2023
Opening: Saturday 2 September, 2-4pm
Painting with Cold Wax Workshop: Register Here
Physical Traces, mapping with detail is a collaborative effort by two women meeting together to explore the volcanic, sedimentary and the oceanic. Undertaken with cumulative layers of labour, Janet Mazenier’s thick wax surfaces are repeatedly inscribed and eroded with signs, symbols and embodied memories from Ireland, while Sarah Treadwell’s watercolour and oil enact the tension of currently bereft marine conditions in a liquid mesh of figure and ground. Made in the physical community of Te Hau Kapua – Devonport, the work draws obliquely on its earthworks and folded sea edges, yet the artists’ fabrications also refer to distant places and wider social and political conditions.
About the Artists
Janet Mazenier
Based in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Janet’s abstract art practice engages with place, space, time, colour and materiality. She wishes for viewers to interpret these underlying concepts by engaging with the paintings’ texturally-rich, excavated and striated surfaces.
Techniques such as scratching, sgraffito, infinite ways of making marks with various types of wet and dry media and an ability to create visual and actual depth and ethereal surfaces all accrue to the final work. That her practice is as organic as is possible is a major element.
Janet holds a BFA and MFA (1st class Hons., Elam) and in March 2023 was awarded a three-year Scholarship to undertake her PhD in Creative Practice at AUT.
Sarah Treadwell
Sarah Treadwell studied architecture in Aotearoa, registered and practiced in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington and London, and then returned to the School of Architecture at the University of Auckland as the first woman academic staff member. She taught design and architectural drawing and studied early drawings of Aotearoa. She has written on the work of contemporary artists including Barbara Tuck, Maureen Lander and Pauline Rhodes.
Following her academic career Sarah retrained as a painter and printmaker and currently works in these fields. The focus of her research has been on conditions of ground in Aotearoa and Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific, investigated with painting and mixed media. Her work has been exhibited at Te Tuhi, Pakuranga, Gus Fisher Gallery, University of Auckland and Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi, Wellington, New Zealand.
