Jacqueline Fahey

Jacqueline Fahey
ONZM
Fahey in 2013
Born 1929 (age 88–89)
Timaru, New Zealand
Nationality New Zealander
Awards Arts Foundation Icon Award

Jacqueline Mary Fahey ONZM (born 1929) is a New Zealand painter and writer.

Biography

Of Irish-Catholic ancestry, Fahey was born in Timaru in 1929.[1] She was educated at Teschemakers, a now-closed Catholic boarding school for girls, near Oamaru.[1] She then studied at the Canterbury University College School of Art, graduating with a Diploma of Fine Arts in 1952.[2]

Fahey was married to prominent psychiatrist Fraser McDonald, who she met at a party at her flat in Wellington.[3] During her married life, Fahey, McDonald and their three daughters lived in houses on the grounds of psychiatric institutions in Australia and New Zealand.[3][4] Fraser died in 1994.[5]

Fahey has written two memoirs about her life: Something for the Birds (2006) and Before I Forget (2012).[1]

Career

Fahey has been an active painter since the 1950s.[1] In 1964, Fahey organised an exhibition with artist Rita Angus at the Center Gallery in Wellington.[1] This exhibition included an equal number of female and male artists and was one of the first exhibitions in New Zealand to take an intentionally gender-balanced curatorial approach.[1]

In 1980, Fahey was awarded a QEII Arts Council Award to travel to New York and study painting.[6] Her work increased in prominence in the 1980s, through galleries such as the Women's Gallery, established in Wellington in 1980, which sought to provide exposure to women's art and question the often patriarchal structures of the art world and market.[7]

During the 1980s and 1990s, Fahey taught painting at the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland.[1] She was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to art in the 1997 New Year Honours.[8]

In 2007 Fahey's paintings Christine in the Pantry (1972) and Sisters Communing (1974)[9] were included in the major exhibition WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.[10]

In 2013, she received an Arts Foundation Icon Award, the Foundation's highest honour.[1]

Art

Fahey is credited as being one of the first painters in New Zealand to paint from a female perspective and examine the domestic subjects of contemporary women's existence: children, the home, marriage, community life, and relationships.[11] Due to their subject matter and approach, Fahey's paintings are closely associated with the wider societal women's liberation and feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s.[12]

During many of her years as a practising artist, Fahey did not have a studio, but instead painted on a large trolley, surrounded by the activities and energy of her family and household and following the action as it unfolded.[5][4] Fahey has said: "Art should come from what an artist knows about life, and if what a woman knows is not what a man knows, then her art is going to have to be different."[13]

Fahey's paintings depict the detail, disorder and minutiae of domestic life, but simultaneously disrupt it, by playing with perspective and space within and across the image's frame.[14] Objects pile on top of each other, surfaces are intricately patterned, and figures merge with their surroundings. The oil painting Christine in the Pantry (1973), held in the collection of Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru, is an example of Fahey's manipulation of space, patterning, and depiction of everyday, prosaic objects.[15] The women in Fahey's paintings often look directly out at the viewer, challenging or questioning the gaze directed at them.[16] For example, in the painting Final Domestic Expose – I paint Myself (1981–1982), held in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Fahey is shown calmly contemplating the viewer whilst surrounded by a maelstrom of children, food, washing, cosmetics, and other objects associated with family life.[17]

Fahey's paintings can be found in major public and private art collections across New Zealand, including Victoria University of Wellington's art collection, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Christchurch Art Gallery, Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru, and the Hocken Collection at the University of Otago.

Selected solo exhibitions

  • 1973 Victoria University of Wellington[18]
  • 1974 John Leech Galleries, Auckland[18]
  • 1978–79 Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland[18]
  • 1983 RKS Art, Auckland[18]
  • 1983 Galerie Legard, Wellington[18]
  • 1988 Brooker Gallery, Wellington[18]
  • 2018 Jacqueline Fahey: Say Something!, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu [4]

Selected group exhibitions

Publications

  • Something for the Birds (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2006) ISBN 978-1-86940-355-3
  • Before I Forget (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2012) ISBN 978-1-86940-581-6

Further information

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Biography: Jacqueline Fahey – Painter/Writer". The New Zealand Arts Foundations. Archived from the original on 26 January 2015. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  2. ↑ "NZ university graduates 1870–1961: F". Retrieved 15 July 2014.
  3. 1 2 "Twelve Questions: Jacqueline Fahey", The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 Milburn, Felicity (12 January 2018). "From the Christchurch Art Gallery's Collection: The Portobello Settee". The Press. Christchurch. Retrieved 13 January 2018.
  5. 1 2 New Zealand Listener interview
  6. ↑ Blundell, Sally. "Interview: Jacqueline Fahey". New Zealand Listener.
  7. ↑ "Painting and Identity", Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  8. ↑ "New Year honours list 1997". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 31 December 1996. Archived from the original on 5 December 2012. Retrieved 15 July 2014.
  9. ↑ "Sisters Communing", Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 16 July 2016.
  10. ↑ "NZ artist included in critically-acclaimed feminist art show". The Big Idea. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015.
  11. ↑ Art at Te Papa, McAloon, William (ed), Te Papa Press, 2009, p. 315.
  12. ↑ "Arts and the Nation", Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
  13. ↑ "Mother and daughter quarrelling", Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  14. ↑ Alter/Image, Barton, Christina and Lawler-Dormer, Deborah (eds), City Gallery Wellington; Auckland Art Gallery, 1993, p. 9.
  15. ↑ "Christine in the Pantry", NZ Museums. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  16. ↑ "Birthday parties: an artist's impression", Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  17. ↑ "Final Domestic Expose – I paint Myself", Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Alter/Image, Barton, Christina and Lawler-Dormer, Deborah (eds), City Gallery Wellington and Auckland City Art Gallery, 1993, p. 108.


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