Karin Montgomery is a craft-based artist, working from a background in textiles, interior design and her innate passion for ecology.
Montgomery shows an attentiveness to her ecological surroundings, and prides herself as a gardener and an observer with always an interest in making.
As an observer, Montgomery has drawn close attention to the Camellia flower within her current exhibition at Object Space, The Camellia Society. The show presents ten beautifully detailed hand-crafted replica paper Camellias that line the gallery in an ode to a garden.
Paying close attention to a normally overlooked Camellia plant, Karin puts its beauty to the forefront, reminding us of the little nuggets of beauty sitting right in our backyard. Inviting viewers to engage with attentiveness and to become observers of the beauty within our own ecological surroundings.
Maya had a kōrero with Karin about the show and her overall practice.
Takunda and Aniket join Rachel and Sam in the studio to chat about being part of the series Rediscovering Aotearoa. Discussing decolonisation, Takunda's spoken word poetry in the Reo episode, and Aniket's medical education in the Hauora episode, as well as how watching this series impacted them. A moving and important watch.
Jenna's just read Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu and highly recommends it. If Charles' work on HBO series, Westworld, isn't enough to entice you to read this book, perhaps winning the Fiction prize in the National Book Awards for 2020 will.
This week the arts community has been remembering Nanette Cameron, who passed away aged 95. She's been dubbed "Aotearoa’s preeminent interior designer" by arts organisation Objectspace, "instrumental in the flourishing of interior design practice in Tāmaki Makaurau and nationally." Her passing has been met with tributes, gratitude and aroha for a woman who is described by those who met her as formidable, a sweetheart and everything in between. To hear more about her life Frances caught up with retired director of Objectspace, Philip Clarke, who was director of Objectspace when they staged the major exhibition and published the publication Nanette Cameron: Interior Design Legend in 2013.
August Ward is an artist who grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau, whose primarily painting practice explores the visual signature and emblems of affluence and desire, consumption and the idealised female form – existing in the uncanny valley of womanhood, letting the contrast and intersection of imperfection and glamour lead the work both practically and conceptually.
Her current solo exhibition at Ivan Anthony, World of Interiors, sees Ward furthering her exploration in this realm of subject matter, expanding her painting and drawing practice in scale and form, bringing these sculptural qualities into the works and space surrounding. Crystals adorning the canvas to form a necklace, ledges attached at the base of others with taxidermied mice, and a cavity for a Miss Dior perfume to perch, these symbols become physical adornments to the glamour of their pictorial counterparts. Pushing and pulling each painting’s textural potential, the idea of the surface sits at the forefront of her relationship with oil paint and graphite as her primary mediums.
Sof caught up with August about World of Interiors ahead of its opening tonight.
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