Artist a role model for women
Celebrated artist Frances Hodgkins — linked to Ka¯ piti by her sister Isabel — is a role model for women, said Pamela Gerrish Nunn, curator of Mahara Gallery’s exhibition marking the 150th anniversary of Hodgkins’ birth.
Frances Hodgkins, from Dunedin to Waikanae has 20 works, sourced from private and institutional collectors around New Zealand. It opens at the gallery on Sunday April 28.
Gerrish Nunn was drawn to Hodgkins when she first came to New Zealand in 1989 from England.
“Yes, she remains relevant, but I have a stronger sense of her value today because her works have stood the test of time.
“They are still as fascinating as people found them when they were first seen.
“She’s more a role model and she shows us what a person can do if they have determination and character and self-belief — something that girls and women can still struggle with even today.”
The exhibition has brought together works that span Hodgkins’ artistic career from her early years in Dunedin through years living overseas where she established a reputation as one of the most important figures in British modernism — to her death in England in 1947.
“We get an insight into what it meant to start off in 1870s Dunedin, travel the world and end up famous in mid 20thcentury.
“I saw Frances Hodgkins as an obvious subject — along with Rita Angus — when I first came to New Zealand.
“She’s an important figure in any account of New Zealand art, and also a vivid example of women whose lives straddled the 19th and 20th centuries — a particular interest of mine.”
Gerrish Nunn said as well as covering the span of Hodgkins’ life, the gallery has sought to present works that haven’t been seen at the gallery before.
“We deliberately haven’t leant on the Field collection this time because the works are so familiar to Mahara visitors.
“Instead we’ve gathered a selection of works that regular Mahara visitors will see complement or confirm their Field collection favourites.”
Hodgkins’ determination to follow her dream is one of the characteristics Gerrish Nunn admires.
“Anyone who persisted in the way she did over so many years to follow her ambition — especially when you think she lived through two world wars and inhabited two very different parts of the world — must be accounted special.”
Mahara Gallery director Janet Bayly said Hodgkins’ sister Isabel and her husband Will Field provide the link to Waikanae.
“It’s the reason why Waikanae became ‘ancestral’ to Frances Hodgkins.
“It also connects the exhibition to Mahara Gallery’s quest to achieve a museumstandard home for the Field Collection which contains 24 of Frances Hodgkins’ works.”