BFA, Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University - Contemporary New Zealand Painting
Carole Prentice grew up in Auckland, living in Mt Wellington, a working class suburb squeezed between the Tamaki River and Maungarei, - the mountain known by most people as Mt Wellington. As a child she clambered up the steep sides of Maungarei many times, but now as an adult and an artist she climbs mountains only to look more critically at landscapes she thinks she knows. From such a vantage point Prentice considers how tenuous Pakeha occupation of the land is and imagines ways in which traces of much earlier indigenous occupation echo and endure.
Such perspectives are evident in her paintings, where dreamlike floating islands and patterns are inspired by the dramatic landforms found in and around the Auckland and Whangarei Harbour where she currently resides. These shapes, in an archipelago of discovery explore the dimensions of place where the past persists, and speaks to us in the present.
Prentice’s current style uses a wash of oil paint in order to underpin her compositions with a vibrantly painted colourfield. Graduating from Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine arts in 2001 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Prentice has since exhibited alongside such prestigious New Zealand artists as Allie Eagle, Ralph Hotere, Justin Summerton and John Walsh.
Carole Prentice grew up in Auckland, living in Mt Wellington, a working class suburb squeezed between the Tamaki River and Maungarei, - the mountain known by most people as Mt Wellington. As a child she clambered up the steep sides of Maungarei many times, but now as an adult and an artist she climbs mountains only to look more critically at landscapes she thinks she knows. From such a vantage point Prentice considers how tenuous Pakeha occupation of the land is and imagines ways in which traces of much earlier indigenous occupation echo and endure.
Such perspectives are evident in her paintings, where dreamlike floating islands and patterns are inspired by the dramatic landforms found in and around the Auckland and Whangarei Harbour where she currently resides. These shapes, in an archipelago of discovery explore the dimensions of place where the past persists, and speaks to us in the present.
Prentice’s current style uses a wash of oil paint in order to underpin her compositions with a vibrantly painted colourfield. Graduating from Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine arts in 2001 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Prentice has since exhibited alongside such prestigious New Zealand artists as Allie Eagle, Ralph Hotere, Justin Summerton and John Walsh.
PAINTINGS
COLONIAL SERVICE
As an artist and a fourth generation New Zealander endeavouring to secure a dialogue about identity and place, it was not surprising that I was drawn to the imagery of ancient forms of heraldic insignia. This resource of emblems concerned itself with similar identifying subject matter to that stamped into the underside of household ceramics which I had already been referencing in my paintings. The minimal designs of Heraldry reminded me again of family histories. Histories reminisced during my early childhood over relaxed conversations with my father upon his weekly return from the 5 o’clock closing of the local pub. Slurred speeches of some length talked of long gone connections, to a listening audience of one small child. Connections that romantically suggested titles, such as Lords, Earls, Viscounts and Baronettes, not to mention Reverends, Bishops and even Primates!
As an artist and a fourth generation New Zealander endeavouring to secure a dialogue about identity and place, it was not surprising that I was drawn to the imagery of ancient forms of heraldic insignia. This resource of emblems concerned itself with similar identifying subject matter to that stamped into the underside of household ceramics which I had already been referencing in my paintings. The minimal designs of Heraldry reminded me again of family histories. Histories reminisced during my early childhood over relaxed conversations with my father upon his weekly return from the 5 o’clock closing of the local pub. Slurred speeches of some length talked of long gone connections, to a listening audience of one small child. Connections that romantically suggested titles, such as Lords, Earls, Viscounts and Baronettes, not to mention Reverends, Bishops and even Primates!
FINDING LONGITUDE
On Captain James Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific in 1776 he took with him, on board the HMS Resolution, a copy of John Harrison’s radical new navigational aid, the H4 marine chronometer, which was an innovative but accurate way of finding longitude.
As an artist, I was fascinated by Harrison’s contribution to the development of exploration because it was he who invented the means by which others like Cook could “know” more precisely than ever before exactly where they were. Where Harrison designed an instrument that measured time in order to establish location I see myself involved in a similar project. I too am trying to secure a position, the difference of course is that my “invention” proposes a unique and personal visual language that documents the co-ordinates of self; in a discovery of place.
HALO, IT'S GOOD TO BE HERE
Not that I have ever been to Europe and looked up into the arched vault of the duomo and seen for myself where the frescoed angels hide. As someone New Zealand born and raised, and currently living out at Ocean Beach near the entrance to Whangarei Heads, my appreciation of the cathedral is more likely to be informed by the mountain called Te Whara that in sheer pillars of volcanic rock thrusts skyward from the base of the cauldron which sits in the picture window at the end of my kitchen sink. As an artist, because my experience is in Northland and not Rome or Venice, the only visibly angelic shape I have encountered is a carving of a manaia on a wooden post that watches over the DOC track leading down to the beach. So I imagine them. The angels. What they might look like. What they might be doing. Right here. Right now.
ASK THIS MOUNTAIN
Maungarei, Mountain of Watchfulness’, a name formed through a people living closely attuned to the resources that the mountain offered them. A name that resonated a relationship between a mountain and its people. A giant volcanic landform, from whose heightened viewpoint, local Maori looked down over their territories and maintained an enduring presence. Their chief occupying the summit (tihi) above which a high platform was built to serve as watch-tower [today notably replaced by a Trig Station]. A gong or a conch hung from the watch-tower to sound the alarm for those working in the plantations between the mountain and the shore should it be necessary.
SCULPTURE
TRUE DAUGHTERS OF THE NORTH
It had been a year of `bearing my cross’ in this `paradise’ of Bream Head. Surrounded by majestic mountain ranges, the sides of which dip deeply down into a sandy shore besieged by wind and surf. Houses fringed with corridors of indigenous bush protecting colourful beddings of imported flora nestled into the semi-rural gardens ………..
My imagination had been arrested by a box of well-used insinkerator plug-holes lying randomly on a shelf in the local Demolition Yard. I bargained at the counter and left, carrying three of these 3-D sculptural objects with the intention of adapting them for use as framing devices.
My next trip took me to the Salvation Army second-hand depot where I second-glanced a miniature figurine sitting solo amongst a meddly of mismatched cups and saucers. I returned to make the purchase, all of $1.00. A precise pink figurine of Mary from the children’s rhyme “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” -- “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With cockle shells and silver bells All in a pretty row.”
……….. Yep, that was me, working away in the wilderness of domestic challenge despite the fact that life has a way of dragging you down the gurgler, chopping you up and spitting you out. A bit like Ada McGrath in Jane Champion’ s movie `The Piano’, really. Life’s not so very different now, except Ada lived on the west coast and I live on the east coast, oh, and unlike Ada, I get to enjoy the benefits of everyday mod con’s such as an insinkerator, or maybe that should be in-sink-… er…- ate-her.
TRUE DAUGHTERS OF THE NORTH
It had been a year of `bearing my cross’ in this `paradise’ of Bream Head. Surrounded by majestic mountain ranges, the sides of which dip deeply down into a sandy shore besieged by wind and surf. Houses fringed with corridors of indigenous bush protecting colourful beddings of imported flora nestled into the semi-rural gardens ………..
My imagination had been arrested by a box of well-used insinkerator plug-holes lying randomly on a shelf in the local Demolition Yard. I bargained at the counter and left, carrying three of these 3-D sculptural objects with the intention of adapting them for use as framing devices.
My next trip took me to the Salvation Army second-hand depot where I second-glanced a miniature figurine sitting solo amongst a meddly of mismatched cups and saucers. I returned to make the purchase, all of $1.00. A precise pink figurine of Mary from the children’s rhyme “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” -- “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With cockle shells and silver bells All in a pretty row.”
……….. Yep, that was me, working away in the wilderness of domestic challenge despite the fact that life has a way of dragging you down the gurgler, chopping you up and spitting you out. A bit like Ada McGrath in Jane Champion’ s movie `The Piano’, really. Life’s not so very different now, except Ada lived on the west coast and I live on the east coast, oh, and unlike Ada, I get to enjoy the benefits of everyday mod con’s such as an insinkerator, or maybe that should be in-sink-… er…- ate-her.
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PHOTOGRAPHY
Winter Flowering Tecomanthe (2014) digital image, 60cm x 65cm Creamy white flowers of tecomanthe that burst out of the thick wooden stem of the climbing vine suggest the way in which Jesus is carried up into heaven. Endemic to the thirteen uninhabited Three Kings Islands, north-west of Cape Reinga, tecomanthe clambers up the trunks of mature trees where it scrambles into the canopy in search of sunlight. In this image tecomanthe hoists itself toward the light by weaving thick tendrils in and out of the wooden verandah rail of a pole house. The inherent strength of the winter flowering tecomanthe is a symbol of the ascension and enduring power of a risen Christ. |
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