Miranda Parkes
going for gold 2016, Christchurch, Acrylic paint on wooden frame 100 x 100 mm
Miranda Parkes has been practicing as a professional artist since graduating with a MFA (Distinction) in painting from the University of Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand) in 2005. Her diverse practice addresses the expanded field of painting, and includes large-scale installation, video and work in public space as well as the painting as object. Recent exhibitions include: the merriest, Jonathan Smart Gallery (2018); the merrier, Hocken Collections, Dunedin (2017) and Stargazer at Yuill/Crowley, Sydney (2015). Parkes’ work is held in public collections throughout New Zealand and in private collections in New Zealand, Australia and the U.K. Parkes has been the recipient of several awards including the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship (2016), Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation Art Award (2013), Tylee Cottage Fellowship, Whanganui (2009) and the William Hodges Fellow, Southland (2007).
Shared Lines: Aotearoa in Japan 2020
nurture, acrylic, gold and silver foil, varnish, gaffa tape and collage elements on card, 2020 (300 x 210 mm)
‘Nurture’ forms part of a body of work exploring painting over, and in response to, found surfaces such as book pages or (as in this case) my child’s artwork. The tone and character of the found surface inform the resulting work, which develops in gradual spontaneous layers. These works often incorporate words, used for their formal qualities as well as their meaning. ‘nurture’ here can be read as a latent command, or embedded gesture in the painting, its straight-edged shapes contrasting with wildly organic swathes of high-keyed colour.
Shared Lines: Wellington 2017 / Kaikōura 2019
talkwalker 2017, Christchurch.
Acrylic and enamel on board 800 x 800 mm
talkwalker belongs to a big noisy body of walk called the merrier, it's helpful to look at talkwalker in context of this whole body of work: the statement for the merrier says:
Drawing on the expanded field of painting, Miranda Parkes makes art that speaks to the bodily experience and subjectivity of abstraction. The language of painting and textual references filter through her new body of work, in which she playfully alludes to the overlap between art, poetry and everyday life.
talkwalker articulates an attempt to marry various personal and colloquial languages within the abstract mode, as layers of paint combine in a playful way that brings life and personality to the work.
Shared Lines: Aotearoa in Japan 2020
Splitter, Acrylic on canvas, 2007
Perhaps if a painting had an earthquake of its own the result would look something like this.
Splitter was made by pouring paint from a bucket very thickly onto a flat canvas surface. The canvas was then shaped and distorted, causing the paint to split apart and revealing the orange ground beneath.
This work was made in 2007 - years before earthquakes were part of my everyday experience. However, after the quakes nothing looks the same as it once did and Splitter is no exception. This painting now seems to be a stand-in for the earth itself, with its wrapping of blue ocean, its moving plates and molten core below.