…another dissection
…another dissection
Heather Straka
Trish Clark Gallery
1 Bowen Ave, Auckland
01 November - 21 December, 2019
Opening Friday 01 November, 6:00pm
Heather Straka Film set (detail) for ...another dissection
Heather Straka’s insightful explorations, through her different approaches in the dual mediums of paint and film, have created a significant body of compelling and often controversial work. With an MFA in Film, Straka demonstrates technical control of her medium and coupled with a finely modulated handling of her contentious subject matter, she deftly questions tradition, challenges the politically correct, and subverts expectations. This latest series of photographs expands on her two previous series, The Anatomy Lesson and Blood Lust, bringing together a new team that explicates Straka’s usual subversive dark-humoured play with stereotypes, this time focussed on efforts at extinguishing the status quo via the torching of that cultural referent widely recognised as symbolic in cultural life in New Zealand-Aotearoa through the Jane Campion film of the same name, the piano.
Graduating BFA in Sculpture at the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 1994, Straka honed an acute attention to detail later carried through to her painting practice, developed over several years spent in France. Straka returned to New Zealand to her first exhibition of paintings in 1998, later graduating with an MFA in Film from Canterbury University’s Ilam School of Fine Arts in 2000. Since then Straka has been awarded several scholarships and residencies: in 2002 she was presented the Pierce Low Award for Excellence in Painting from the Royal Overseas League, London; was awarded New Zealand’s esteemed Frances Hodgkins Fellowship in 2008; and the William Hodges Fellowship in 2011. Her work is held in all New Zealand’s major public collections.