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Flightless Birds
Debbie Adamson, Aphra Cheesman, Octavia Cook, Emma Fitts, Cheryl Lucas, Shelley Norton
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An exhibition by six women artists from Aotearoa New Zealand.
Debbie Adamson grew up in Central Otago and studied Jewellery and Metalsmithing at Otago Polytechnic School of Fine Arts in Dunedin. Debbie uses industrial steel, forged and carved to create a series of needle like pendants, depicting the leaves and stems of various species of NZ native plants. Some of these are from trees that have become popular in urban design - such as the lancewoods with their very distinct juvenile and adult forms - and some of these are endemic leguminous plants - many of which are vulnerable, and grow slowly in fragile habitats.Aphra Cheesman is a Naarm/Melbourne based artist from Aotearoa/New Zealand. Aphra’s practice includes contemporary jewellery, objects, drawing, video and sculpture. Her research examines our complex relationships with commonplace materials and objects, often considered in relation to the cycles of capitalism and other economic, social, political and environmental systems. Her work is often situated within the overlooked and in-between moments of everyday life and she has a daily practice of observing and collecting from which her research and creative works often evolve.
Octavia Cook was born in Auckland but currently resides in Port Chalmers, New Zealand. In 1999 she graduated with a Bachelor of Design in Jewellery from Auckland’s Unitec, and in 2003 she launched her fictitious family jewellery ‘company’, Cook & Co. To date Cook’s interest in her craft has spanned the traditional forms, settings and materials of jewellery, as well as its packaging, marketing and provenance. Special attention has been reserved for the value and social function of jewels.
Emma Fitts lives and works in įtautahi Christchurch, New Zealand. Her sculptural paintings and interdisciplinary installations draw from painting, architecture, textiles and art history. Fitts studied at the University of Canterbury, įtautahi, and completed an MFA at Glasgow School of Art, Scotland. Fitts returned to įtautahi from the UK in 2014 as the Olivia Spencer Bower recipient, was a McCahon House resident for winter 2018, and completed the Fulbright-Wallace residency at The Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco, in 2019.
Cheryl Lucas was born and raised in Tarras, Central Otago. She has a Diploma in Fine and Applied Art (Distinction Graphics) from Otago School of Art, Dunedin (1975) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Advanced Printmaking (Lithography) from Wimbledon College of Art, London (1979).
Shelley Norton is a contemporary jeweller based in Auckland. The general concept that underpins Shelley Norton’s work is the notion of meaning and how we construct it, and how this fascinating production in turn, defines, supports and constrains us, in our daily existence. By taking the discarded plastic shopping bag, Norton seeks to create pieces that engage the viewer, to enjoy established and new ways of seeing.
