Source: University of Otago
‘Self-Portrait at Caversham’, 2001-2002, acrylic on board: 570 x 750mm, collection of the artist.
Enigmatic and individualistic artist Joe L’Estrange will have her first solo exhibition at a public gallery this month when a major survey of her vibrant paintings goes on display at the University of Otago’s Hocken Library.
More than 60 of the Ōamaru-born, Ōtepoti-based artist’s pieces, from both Hocken’s permanent collection and private Aotearoa collections, will feature in ‘Joe L’Estrange Painter’.
Robyn Notman, Head Curator of Hocken’s Pictorial Collections describes L’Estrange as “something of an enigma within the wider art world”.
“While her art is well known to many private collectors in Ōtepoti Dunedin and elsewhere in this country, as well as those in Australia and Japan, her work has not been included in public gallery exhibitions since 1993.
“This is in part because she is an extremely private person, but also because throughout her career she has rigorously pursued an individualistic practice, concentrating on what interests her as an artist. In 1992, after winning the Adam Portraiture Award, she commented that she was ‘a purely what-the-eye-sees person and that’s terribly out of fashion’.”
‘Blue Garden’, 2017-2018, acrylic on board: 600 x 450mm, Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, V2019.12.1. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.
The exhibition at Hocken provides audiences with a unique opportunity to see so many of L’Estrange’s artworks in one place.
It spans the breadth of her career from the 1980s, shortly after she graduated from the Dunedin School of Art, through to works completed during the 2020 lockdown and into 2021.
Her subject matters focus on portraiture, landscape and still life, with a rich dose of flower and garden studies and paintings of cats.
“There are numerous artists who have painted flowers and gardens, but not many who have articulated these with the level of hypnotic intensity, delicacy, spatial complexity and energy that is evidenced in L’Estrange’s paintings.
“Everything L’Estrange paints has a potency about it, even if it’s a tin can. This is intrinsic to the way she paints what she sees and why her art is not like anyone else’s.
‘Cat on Windowsill, Corstorphine’, 2013-2015, acrylic on board: 590 x 855 mm, Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago, V2015.16.1. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.
“Her skill as a painter, her artistic individualism and the pursuit of a painting narrative reflecting her own fascinations – which include her engagement with humans, animals and plants – align her practice with contemporary curatorial interests in the work of past and current women artists, who as self-confident questers are agents of their own creative destinies,” Ms Notman says.
In another first for L’Estrange, the Hocken is also producing the first major publication about her art.
Set to reproduce about 60 of her artworks, the book will include a responsive piece of writing from Wellington-based art writer Megan Dunn and introduction by Ms Notman. It is hoped to be printed by mid-December.
Joe L’Estrange Painter is on from 5 November 2022 to 18 February 2023, Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 3pm, at the Hocken Gallery, 90 Anzac Ave, Ōtepoti Dunedin, phone 03 479 8868 www.otago.ac.nz/hocken
