Youeatchewhatcheware
Jacquelyn Greenbank
31 May – 15 Jun 2019
Graduating from Canterbury University’s School of Fine Arts with a BFA in painting in 2003 and an MFA (distinction in painting) in 2005, Marlborough-born Jacquelyn Greenbank has received scholarships and awards including being finalist in the National Contemporary Art Award (2019), Zonta Ashburton Female Art Award (2019), Portage Ceramic Awards (2017 & 2018). She won People’s Choice Award (2004) and the National Drawing Award (2005). Featured in Compelled: New Artists Show at ArtSpace in Auckland in 2005, she was a finalist in the Wallace Trust Art Awards (2006), was showcased in Telecom Prospect (2007), and in 2009 she exhibited in Sweden.
In 2015-16 Greenbank was awarded the Olivia Spencer Bower Residency relocating her back to Christchurch after a period of living in The Bay Of Plenty following the 2011 earthquakes. In 2018-19 her work was shown in the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu exhibition, We Do This, celebrating women in art. Her work is represented in significant private and public collections both in New Zealand and overseas.
Youeatchewhatcheware; A Cryptohistory. The truth is subverted.
Greenbank’s work explores crypohistory and the urbanisation and alienation of her own tenuous and fractured cultural identity. She carefully arranges objects to make them appear as if born from a pseudo-historical narrative. Unable to discover their origin or align them with any known culture, the audience is left to try and decipher their meaning through material clues, often strangely positioned together hinting at processes of alienation and adaptation.
In Youeatchewhatcheware the audience is invited to join the war cry, to raise a banner, adorn the garb and burn candles, and join this mystical cult of vegetables and dim sum.