Making Spaces

In this lecture series, leading artists are invited to share their research, illuminating their practices and the contexts in which they operate professionally. 

Tuesday 6 August, 6pm

Elam Lecture Theatre 432-136
Elam School of Fine Arts
20 Whitaker Place
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Occupying spaces - looking at the horizon and asking what is behind that tree?

Fiona Clark left Inglewood, Taranaki in 1971 and moved to Auckland starting at Elam School of Fine Arts in 1972, fifty-two (52) years ago.

In her own words, "The art history and paintings presented to us at Elam were exponents of romanticism - it had little relationship to what I had found in the inner city of Auckland - to the events and friends I was meeting at that time. I learnt to never just look at the tree – to seriously look behind, question and listen.

I moved to Tikorangi, Taranaki in 1975 purchasing the ex-dairy factory property and buildings. My work practise is longitudinal. Far from being clinical and sanitised I do my best to engage."

Join us on campus as this exceptional artist shows how closely and deeply, she has been looking and cataloguing what is behind that tree her whole career.

Above: Fiona Clark: Unafraid. Released in 2021.

About the artist: Fiona Clark

Fiona Clark was born in 1954 in Inglewood, Taranaki New Zealand. She received a Diploma in Fine Arts (Hons) from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 1975. She focused on performance and sculpture, though photography became her favoured medium.

She has developed her practice from this time, undertaking in-depth, long-term photographic projects that provide access to crucial forms of social history and documenting specific social groups. She has produced intimate and engaging images of bodies generally avoided by the public gaze, be they drag performers, professional bodybuilders, or people living with HIV.

Significant projects she has undertaken include Kai Moana (1979/81); Body Building (1982); He Taura Tangata (1986); Living with AIDS (1989); The Other Half (1997) and Go Girl (2002).

Her work was included in, but subsequently removed from the first survey of contemporary photography, The Active Eye, organised and toured by the Manawatū Art Gallery in 1975–6, a problematic act of censorship in response to public outcry at her photographs’ subject matter.

Since then, her works have been included in exhibitions at public galleries including Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth; Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt; Manawatū Art Gallery, Palmerston North; Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui; National Art Gallery, Wellington; City Gallery, Wellington, and other spaces such as Real Pictures; Photoforum Gallery; Raven Row, London; Artspace, Auckland, and Michael Lett, Auckland.

A feature-length biographical documentary, Fiona Clark: Unafraid, was released in 2021 and she received the My ART Visual Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate award in 2023.

Clark lives and works in Tikorangi, Taranaki, where she presents her work in a gallery she created in part of the old dairy factory she owns and where she maintains and develops her extensive archives.

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Email: creative@auckland.ac.nz