AOTEAROA ART FAIR 2-5 March, 2023
Artist collective, mothermother, returns to the 2023 Aotearoa Art Fair with nine new members: Jana Wood, Tori Beeche, Michelle Reid, Susan Nelson, Peter Derksen, Rowan Thomson, Lillie Balfour, Janet Mazenier, Karen Rubado and founder Natalie Tozer. This growing anti-establishment collective has been getting noticed as a high calibre underdog, with its eclectic range of talent and grassroots cool factor.
Expect a twist from this group’s booth if past years are anything to go by – dirty, peeling wallpaper and sex booth reds. This year mothermother is hauling in a long-table titled simply ‘The Table’, where you are invited to pull up a chair and take in the works as you would at a friend’s dining room table. Just as mothermother was founded on an ethos of manaakitanga, The Table conjures images of community, home, sharing of kai, connection, ritual, and belonging – a thread that runs through the work that awaits: remnants of a hug in bronze, paintings inspired by daily walks and elemental kitchen ingredients, melted and repurposed pewter tea sets, film stills of an other-worldly home-bound odyssey, and woven things undone, to name a few.
NATALIE TOZER is a multimedia artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau exploring narratives of the underground to unearth objects and knowledge. Working with time-based processes and materiality she is interested in mythology, debt forgiveness, access to the ground, digging, science fiction, anarchist anthropology and the collective. Recent shows include Companion Pieces at Public Record, Māter Mater at Silo 6, National Contemporary Art Award finalists exhibition at Waikato Museum, He Iti and Piki Mai: Up Here for mothermother at the Aotearoa Art Fair, Femisphere 4 (online), Walker and Hall finalists exhibition and Salted Earth at Sosage Gallery. Tozer holds an MFA with first-class honors (scholarship) from the University of Auckland. During her time at Elam UoA she received the Lightship Award which funded the presentation of an open-air 110m video work at The Ports of Auckland, was selected for the Emerging Artists Show at Sanderson Gallery and represented Elam School of Fine Arts at the Guangzhou Graduate Art Fair. Tozer is a kaitohu at LOT23 Media which produces video media focussing on the collective such as the White Ribbon documentary Raise our Men to raise awareness of domestic violence and Oh No for the Sweet Mix which was included in the official selection in the Music Video category at the NYC Independent Film Festival in New York. She is the founder and kaitiaki of the artists-run project and collective which continues to support curatorial activism for underrepresented artists since 2019.
SUSAN NELSON is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based multi-media visual artist who’s practice celebrates authentic creative process as an alchemy that occurs between matter, imagination, and the unconscious. Curiosity and playful exploration are at the heart of her work which spans an eclectic range of mediums from bronze, plasticine, paper, yarn, wax, wood and clay to found objects. She has studied at the Vancouver Academy of Art (Canada), Otago Polytech School of Art & Design, Whitecliffe College of Art & Design (MA AM), and Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University (PGDipFA). She has work in the Wallace Art collection and was a recent finalist at the Molly Morpeth Canaday Art Awards in Whakatane. www.snartist.co | @snartist
LILLIE BALFOUR is an Ōtautahi-based artist interested in the overlaps between media, reality and expectation. Their work engages with text and imagery to locate memories and feelings just beyond reach, and their practice is grounded in bookmaking, printmaking and painting.
TORI BEECHE (b. 1972, Aotearoa) lives and works in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau. Beeche has a Master of Fine Art from University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts (2020). Her work has been included in the finalist exhibitions for the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award (2021), New Zealand Painting & Printmaking Award (2020), and the Sunshine Coast Art Prize (2018). Recent exhibitions include IDYLL at Page Galleries, Wellington (2022); Iteration 14 at MOTHERMOTHER, Auckland (2022); UNSEEN at The Tuesday Club, Auckland (2022); Caught up in Circles at Föenander Galleries, Auckland (2021) and Spaces of Synchronicity at Malcolm Smith Gallery, Auckland (2021). Beeche’s paintings emerge through a process of extracting poetic moments from historical image archives interwoven with Beeche’s personal memories and imaginings. Often reflecting the artist’s own Scandinavian heritage, the works are imbued with a nostalgic longing. www.toribeeche.com
ROWAN THOMSON & PETER DERKSEN (collaboration) Rowan Thomson is a queer pākehā artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Their practice contemplates transcendence, consciousness, embodiment, perception, and identity. Through photography, video, and image-based installations, they explore an ambiguous space between form and abstraction that raises questions about the boundaries of the self. Rowan recently completed a BFA(Hons) at the University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau. Recent exhibitions include Iteration 17, mothermother (2022), Transmutations, Brittle City Press (2022). PETER DERKSEN is an artist and archivist living and working in Tāmaki Makaurau. Within his sculptural installations, matter shifts between states, muddying forms in contemplation of hyperconsumptive systems. Instability is embedded within these transformations, leaving room for molecular structures to become unfixed and unpredictable. Recent exhibitions include Portage Ceramic Awards, Te Uru Waitākere (2022), and twisting, turning, winding, Objectspace (2022).
MICHELLE REID is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau who works under an umbrella of Atmosphere Aesthetics and Emotional Spaces engaging with the felt space and exploring climatological realities in her painterly practise. Reid’s interests in environmental degradation of a future post-human landscape generate her displaced sense of romanticism.