Jane Zusters

My cherry tree had so much fruit this year that there was enough for the birds and me as well. Yesterday I drove past the poor Selwyn river on my way to Leeston and saw some kids trying to launch their Christmas rubber dinghy in a puddle of green water that came up to their knees.  I fantasied about flying drone cameras up our rivers so we can all see what’s happening to our water that has been over allocated. We need water in our rivers for all creatures.  Wai-ora  not  wai-mate – water for life not for death.  Maybe its time for some more artists for save our water action. Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au – I am the river and the river is me. I photographed the Otekaieke River reduced to a bed of stones   earlier this year when I  was  on the hikoi Te Heke Ki Korotuakeka when we were retracing the footsteps of  Te Maiharoa who along with his people  was driven out of Omarama   and his village burned in 1879.

At the moment some of my environmental montages are on display at Aratoi in the NZ Pacific Studio art is a living thing.

A piece of mine is also showing in the Southland Museum and Art Gallery – Niho O the Taniwha exhibition Tamatea – art and conservation Dusky Sound . I wanted to express the reality of the unseen, hard work of the DOC Kakapo rangers contrasted with the pristine, wilderness wonderland that I was privileged to visit as an artist sponsored by DOC. My montage depicts the contents of the doc pantry on Puke Nui otherwise known as Anchor Island juxtaposed with the bush from  Luncheon Cove where 200 years ago William Leith built a house at for the first European sealing gang in Aotearoa.

I am still documenting the RED ZONE in Christchurch and the following image was a touring finalist in the 2016 Wallace Art Award  It was a place that was home. Now It is a vanished suburbia. The New Zealand Government acquired 7041properties as a result of the Christchurch Earthquakes. Its aim was that all the houses were removed and the land cleared by April 2016. As a result of the recent earthquakes at South Shore or Te Karoro Karoro whose original Maori name translates as the seagull’s voices, there have been clearances and forced removals. I have been photographing this vanishing suburban landscape that once was home to hundreds of people. Flooding, land subsidence and liquefaction destroyed many seaside homes and the government ruled that much of South Shore was unsafe to rebuild on and forced those owners whose land had been red zoned to sell to the Crown. Removal vans were replaced with demolition trucks  and then weeds. Then diggers and then graders levelling the earth and new grass being sewn. The obvious signs of the trauma of destroyed houses are now gone. The traces of habitation   remaining such as the jetties and broken fences, testify to a vanished suburban lifestyle. The NZ Historic Places trust has identified parts of the red zoned land at South shore as an area of high pre European archaeological potential. The waterfront  detritus is a  mute reminder of the vanished homes and the ongoing narrative of erasure,

tau hou hari – happy new year

Another  year is over and these have been my art highlights. Special thanks to all my wonderful friends and family for helping make this a great year.

Publishing where did you go to my lovelies and the very nice review in Art New Zealand by Don Abbott NO 156, SUMMER 2015 -16

….It is her knowing the subjects, her empathy with each of them, her belief in and commitment to the society that they collectively form that shines through and shapes the book. If you were part of that group this collection will have social resonance; if you were in Christchurch at the time you will recognise the city the book portrays; if you are politically empathetic you will cheer them on. Even if you are none of these this book is still for you. It is a book of growing up and growing wise, of social groups that form and shape lives, of the forces that bring people together and send them apart.

Being included in the Te Papa publication New Zealand Photography Collected by Athol McCredie.

Exhibiting at RM Gallery , K Rd Auckland in re reading the rainbow :

Being part of the touring show History in the taking: 40 Years of Photoforum which went to Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, being in the book Photoforum at 40 by Nina Seja and having Pink nude in blue pool go to China

thank you Liz Eastman for inviting me to exhibit at Tivoli on Waiheke Island and Cushla Parekowhai for her inspiring korero and Marc Boss for his publication Was there Jane Zusters at Tivoli 2015

photos by Marc Boss at Tivoli

It has been another awesome year and I just want to let you know what I have been up to and wish you all the best for 2015 .

Going to the Photo forum 40^th anniversary book launch, Auckland Photography festival coinciding with my solo show unruly memoirs: nature bites back at Sanderson Gallery in Herne Bay – in October I was lucky to be invited  by Dr Kay Flavell to join her in Berlin with New Pacific Studio Vallejo on location and then do a residency in Vallejo.

exhibition travels New Pacific Studio Vallejo, Residency2014

It was an action packed time with some of the highlights being :

London – Malevich at the Tate Modern – Ansel Kiefer at the Royal Academy – the Mayflower pub with Richard and Gareth – Francesca Woodman’s photography at Miro Gallery – Soviet photography at the Photographers Gallery – Jersey Boys – Wiltons Music Hall with sister Susan and niece Becky – Dennis Severs’ time capsule House at 18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields

Berlin – drinking wine with Kay in Haberlandstrasse – the Bode Musuem – Perganom Museum – the Brunnenstrasse Berlin wall memorial walk – favourite exhibition: Meschac Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary African Art – meeting Janet Verplank / Gouldner and Marina Prufer – playing my DVD on the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010-2011 in Bernhardt’s space at the Kunstforum at Beizigerstr – Kay projecting a Powerpoint show on Gisele Freund and Edith Hillinger with   theme: Women as Culture Makers – going with Kay,Janet and Marina the John Heartfield House at Waldsieversdorf – then the Brecht and Helene Weigel House in Buckow –  meeting Dr. Iris Berndt at  Käthe-Kollwitz-Museum Berlin- Warning and Temptation – The pictorial worlds of war of Käthe Kollwitz and Kata Legrady – NPS Vallejo on location checking out of Berlin Mitte base with 3 glasses of prosecco at Berlin Tegel airport – reunion with Susan and Becky

wandering to Hamburg

Instead of the Jewish Musuem

walking 5 hours

needing a pee and some kai

eating sausage in the Bode Museum

under the horse in the foyer

finding Janet and Kay

autumn slipping into winter

crows where Giselle Freund

waved to Einstein

ermordet in Auschwitz

dead in Auschwitz

flucht inder tod

flight to death

the murdered Jews

of Haberlandstrasse

there in a bar

Kay and me drinking wine

back at the Bode Museum

four times to the café

I’ve lost count of the times

I have been to the wharepaku

my neice Becky holds a blue bottle

to her eye

on the bridge outside

a small boy

drops a string line

with a boat

to the water

Kay translates

no moon

no stars

In the night

when we fled to the distance

with nothing in our hand

from Bertolt Brecht’s garden

Kay took a mushroom

I took an apple

we can all eat some

we can all die together

says Kay

2014

NPS Vallejo / San Francisco – checking earthquake damage at Napa – meeting Alexandria Brown, the Archivist of the Napa Historical society and discussing the impact the August 25.6 earthquake -photographing Mare Island twice – visiting the Coal Shed Studios – biking with Susan to Kaiser Hospital farmers market – visiting St Vinnie’s Community Garden – the dedication of Eliseo Art Silva’s mural at Filipino Community Centre in Vallejo – Susan, Kay and I helping paint that mural – Susan and I presenting our collaborative project for love of the Mackenzie Country to the class of professor John Dotta at Napa Valley College – attending The Addams Family theater performance in Martinez – the Day of the Dead concert the Vallejo High School- starting with a sacred Navaho song, comprising hip-hop and traditional Mexican and Filipino items and the crowd cheering when a brother and sister read their gay poems – me giving  unruly memoirs; nature bites back to Denise Hunter and Judit Sawangwan for their fine arts students – the students doing work with collage, as glue and magazines are easy to come by in a poor neighborhood – visiting Janet’s ranch and seeing her horses – going to Alcatraz known to Native Americans as Diamond Island, Aliste tinanmiji –  checking out  dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei s installations celebrating freedom  and universalizing the abuse of human rights – an installation that he has never seen as he is not allowed to leave China and using materials that could be shipped innocuously through suspicious Chinese customs services –  sending a postcard to Chelsea Manning – posing for a homeless street artist –

Navaho blankets and pottery at the De Young Musuem – celebrating Haul-o Ween at the Obtainium Works with dinner and performance of a murder mystery in their haunted house- on- wheels – planting seeds and pulling Kay’s weeds – buying  a new compost bin for the back garden – Vallejo Farmers’ Market and a performance with Native American dance and song at the Dia de los Muertos /Day of Remembering/Day of the Dead organized by the Solano Aids Coalition in Georgia Street – lunching  at Zio Fraedo’s on the waterfront – goodbyes at the Marriott, punctuated by screams from the fun fair riders across the road…

Suburban Gutter at Artbox

Back home in Christchurch to the Opening preview  5 November of Mike Coker’s  and my exhibition Suburban Gutter. Mikes’s work  featured a 6.2 metre high work titled ‘if the earth moves’ which was created specifically for the ArtBox L-Pavilion Gallery.

In the ecological entanglement  informing  my reassembled realities I am  exploring  loss and alienation from nature. I ‘m continuing  exploring deep ecologies with a goal of illuminating humankind’s ongoing impact on the environment. My recent wrecked, relocated, collaged rooms testify to the events of the Christchurch Earthquakes, and the politics of destruction  of my old neighbourhood namely the destruction of Holy Trinity Church Avonside which was a Benjamin Mountfort hertitage listed Church knocked down in a rip, shit and bust $20,000 demo which bulldozed intact stained glass windows. 

Suburban Gutter at Artbox was a family affair too for both Mike Coker and me. My three great nephews Nico, Joshua and Luca took the photographs that were the “gutter ” while Mathew and Thomas helped their dad Mike with his painting. See the photographs below and special thanks to Martin Trusttum and Grant Bambury who helped us hang the show.

Watch this space for the work to come from my recent travels…..

I commission my portrait from a homeless street artist called Grady

[flipgorilla flipbook=’1′]

I’m very excited, Mike Coker & I have just made a free online publication to accompany my exhibition, opening at the sanderson CONTEMPORARY ART 11 June 2014.

My next exhibition will be unruly memoirs:geopolitical photomontages at the Sanderson Gallery in Jervois Road, Auckland 11 june -29 june 2014.

Despite threats to bumble bees and asset sales, 2013 has been another good year for me. I have continued the body of work from the where the home is series  but have also begun photographing abandoned spaces. I would like to share  some of this year’s art  highlights and  thank Tamara Darragh from the Sanderson Gallery who encouraged me to put my work forward for this years Wallace Art Awards from which  my photomontage at home Wetlands Grove’ was acquired for the Wallace Art Collection.

I was included in Sanderson Art Gallery’s publication: The Artists: 21 Practitioners in New Zealand Contemporary Art c. 2013-2015 – Edited by Jane Apperley, Tamara Darragh & Kylie Sanderson ,Hardcover book, 140 pages | $39.95

The latest edition of The Artists: 21 Practitioners in New Zealand Contemporary Art profiles a selection of exciting artists from the gallery’s offering, with essays provided by 21 of New Zealand’s most interesting art minds – critics, curators and writers.

see Jamie Hanton’s Essay

‘I keep coming back to Jane Zusters’ work because it is art that takes the wider world as its subject. But rather than merely appraise the world, Zusters investigates and breaks down the artificial barriers between art and politics, art and society, art and life. There is no space in between: what happens in the studio has a responsibility to reflect what is going on outside of it. Zusters has been working to this end since the very beginning of her illustrious and diverse career which now stretches four decades.

During this time Zusters has worked across a range of media including drawing, photography, and painting. Her practice has never been confined to one particular process or technique; adopting this pragmatic approach has allowed Zusters to pick and choose the most effective visual and semiotic tools to convey her messages. The simplicity of her early photographic work Wet Flower (1979) and the iconic Portrait of a woman marrying herself (1977) elegantly and poignantly examine the sociology of gender and sexuality.

More recently – through both painting and photography – she has been exploring deep ecologies with a goal of illuminating humankind’s ongoing impact on the environment. In the exhibitions Bird Talk in 2008 and Return of the Moa in 2010, Zusters meshes artificial systems with natural systems resulting in an inability to separate Nature from the rest of our milieu.

In his book Ecology without Nature (2007) on art, literature, and ecocritique, US-based academic Timothy Morton stated that in effective visual art, ‘There is nothing between background and foreground. And there is nothing between frame and contents. Radical juxtaposition plays with the frame and its contents in such a way as to challenge both dualism (their absolute difference) and monism (their absolute identity).’ In the double exposure Mirage in the farmhouse, Waitaha (2008) the interior and the exterior blend together – artificial light and the boat’s reflections on the water beautifully blur the lines between presence and absence; home and away. There is no space in between to ignore your surroundings.

In Zusters’ most recent work the barriers that once divided one space from another have disintegrated due to the Christchurch earthquakes of September 4, 2010 and February 22, 2011. The framework literally disappears in the digital photographs, capturing a sense of displacement and impermanence. At Home Christchurch 2012 is a confronting juxtaposition where a peaceful snow-covered cemetery stretches from the crumbled walls of an abandoned house. There is a tangible sense of despair, but also a circularity and remembrance that things pass and will return again: the snow will melt away; the cemetery will continue to colonise the land around it and have its inhabitants disturbed by the roots of neighbouring trees; the house will be torn down and new structures built. At a fundamental level Zusters is an artist of change, and a proponent of great hope amongst this change’.

at home New Pacific Studio

I was invited to do a residency at New Pacific Art Studio and used the opportunity to make a new body of work that incorporated images from Pukaha Bird Sanctuary with the kauri interiors from the old farmhouse which is now New Pacific Art Studio.

Seasons Greetings and Happy New Year