Stella Brennan
Stella Brennan’s work deals above all with navigating the space and time between human subjects. She pries open history, its losses and possibilities, interrogating colonialism, industrialization and computerization.
Her new project ‘dear louise’ started with a question about an old painting hanging in her uncle’s house, leading to the discovery of her great aunt Louise Laurent’s life as an artist in Auckland in the 1890s.
Born in france in 1873, Louise’s life spans the family’s emigration to South Australia, her pregnant mother’s solo journey with three young daughters to Auckland in 1877, life in Kingsland and Karangahape Road in the 1880s, art school, marriage and life as mother and orchardist in Mangere.
(Left) St Thomas Kohimarama, Louise Laurent, c.1898. Oil on paper, 390x200mm (Right) The bones of a picture, Stella Brennan, 2020, installation view
'the bones of a picture', Stella Brennan, 2020
Elam art students circa 1897. Louise Laurent stands second from left
Women’s Suffrage Petition 1893, page 19. Archives New Zealand, LE1 1893/7a Signed by Louise’s mother Lucie Elizabeth Mary Laurent and her oldest sister Lothee. Aged 20 in 1893, Louise would have been too young to add her name to the 25,520 signatures. installation view with yukari kaihori (left)
Installation view with Stella Brennan (left), Yukari Kaihori (right)
“Thanks to Peter Brennan for the painting, David Perry for the X-rays, and Anne Else, Ann Calhoun, Geoff Winn, Maurice Winn and Ross Galbreath for their research”. Stella Brennan.
Stella Brennan is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, New Zealand.
Her work has been shown in Australia, Asia, North America and Europe. Her videos have been exhibited in the Sydney and Liverpool biennials and her installation Wet Social Sculpture, featuring whale song, psychedelic film and a fully operational spa pool, was a nominated finalist in the 2006 Walters prize.
Stella curated the exhibitions Nostalgia for the Future (Artspace, Auckland 1999), Dirty Pixels (Artspace, the Adam Art Gallery, the Dunedin public art gallery and the Waikato Museum of Art and History, 2002-3), and co-curated Cloudland: Digital Art from Aotearoa, New Zealand (the Substation Singapore, 2008). She has attended residencies in New York, Sydney, Hamilton and New Plymouth.
Stella has written essays for artists including Ann Veronica Janssens and Patricia Piccinini, as well as art criticism for magazines including Art Asia Pacific, Eyeline Magazine, Australia, the New Zealand Listener and Art New Zealand. Stella co-founded the Aotearoa Digital Arts Discussion list and in 2008 she and Su Ballard edited the Aotearoa Digital Arts Reader, the first comprehensive text on digital arts practice in New Zealand.
Stella Brennan is represented by Trish Clark Gallery.