Vanessa Arthur
Vanessa’s work is directly influenced by her regular documentation and excavation of spaces within the built urban environment, the spaces between planning. The often overlooked elements within the streetscape are her muse; buffed walls, wet cement scrawling, fragments and objects left behind in the rush. An exploration of the marks we make and the mark we make.
‘Exploring a small town, while traveling through Europe a few years ago, I entered an old building. The entrance formed with a large marble slab. As I walked through I noticed the stone had a deep worn dip, made by 800 years of feet coming and going. The perfect tension between the permanent and the fleeting.
This is the feeling I aim to capture in my own work. Small reminders of our own brief moment in time.’
Vanessa Arthur
Vanessa Arthur was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and is currently working from her base in Hawke’s Bay. Vanessa completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts at Whitireia NZ in 2011. On graduating she was selected as artist in residence at Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, Wellington, and awarded the 2011 Fingers Gallery Graduate Award. A participant in the Handshake project, she completed a two year mentorship with Australian Goldsmith David Neale in 2015.
Vanessa has exhibited both throughout New Zealand and internationally. In 2018 she was selected for Iwa: New Zealand Makers – an exhibition of nine featured perspectives in contemporary jewellery, spanning four decades of practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Brought together for Munich Jewellery Week, these practices articulated a relationship to one another as tributaries to a larger, transforming field of practice.
> View Exhibition ‘Dent Collector’ 2020
> View Exhibition ‘To be everywhere at once yet nowhere at all’ 2018