I’m adding Jacqueline Fahey to my list of favourite New Zealand artists.
The problem is, I’m not feeling her later works. A survey of her work is on display at the Gow Langsford gallery until the 20th of this month, and while the exhibit focuses on her ‘unflinching eye for the sociopolitical world (which) has only grown more piercing with time,’ I’m going to venture my uneducated opinion that it’s not her best work, for me anyway. And the latter works are the ones on sale- a triptych (Whatever Happened to Bernadette Devlin) is a steal at $145k, which would be right at home in a brutalist-styled modern home.
But it’s her earlier works, where she mines the interiors of her life as a woman finding meaning and validation as a wife, mother and homemaker that I feel she’s strongest not only visually, but intellectually as well. To paint as she did at a time when society held very different expectations of women, both as individuals and as artists, was a potent radical act. By elevating the domestic sphere and asserting the significance of women's lived experiences, she transformed the personal into the political and this is what cements her legacy among New Zealand's great artists.
In her later works, however, that woman seems to have disappeared, or rather, she is at home and doing stuff that people in their 90s typically do,
Instead, you get the painterly equivalent of someone posting photos and videos to social media, layering protest and outrage over images as literal text. Not being disrespectful, but just imagine if someone gave Jacqueline a phone and several social-media accounts?
Pretty pictures, sure. Provocative? Not really. Will I bring out my black Amex? Yup, but only to purchase her early works.
