From the Collection: tracing artists through time

Looking at an artist’s body of work offers the opportunity to trace multiple stories over time.

The University of Auckland Art Collection holds examples of artworks made at different times by dozens of individual artists, representing developments in their style, subject and medium.

Considering an artist’s work within the context of their own practice bridges our understanding of their place within the art, social and historical landscapes. It also visually documents how and where an artist has pushed the boundaries in their making.

The recent acquisition of three new artworks by two mid-career Pacific artists, Claudia Jowitt (Fiji, iTaukei; Pākehā) and Serene Hodgman (nee Timoteo), (Sāmoa, Safotu and Faleasiu; Rotuma; Tonga; Ireland), demonstrate such developments in each woman’s practice.

Both Claudia and Serene have a significant early artwork held in the collection; the introduction of their more recent artworks to the collection, which were coincidentally first shown together in group exhibition Tali (Melanie Roger Gallery, 2025), reveals much about their growth as artists.

Claudia’s expansive painting ‘Untitled’ (2015) was created during her Master of Fine Arts at the Elam School of Fine Arts, when she was interrogating ideas around ‘feminine’ qualities of painting.

Claudia is known in this era for her decadent painterly surfaces, achieved using cake-icing sets and kitchen implements to apply thick layers of pastel-coloured paint. The result is less about making an image, and more about bringing attention to the process employed in the formation of her sculptural canvases.

This characteristic impasto technique is echoed in the custom frames of ‘Drauna kei na senikau ni Savusavu II and V’ (2025), which have a coral-like texture. Each of these recent collection acquisitions hold a moana-blue cyanotype at their centre.  

These works are from a series that was created in Savusavu, during Claudia’s travels to her homeland. Each comprises silhouettes of native Fijian flora and fauna captured using the cyanotype process, so they appear like scientific specimens.

These works represent Claudia’s forays into a new process, while retaining elements from earlier painterly explorations. The cyanotypes demonstrate how she is establishing a physical sense of place in Moana-Nui-a-Kiwa and her links within it.

Like Claudia, Serene’s large-scale artwork, ‘When you’ve grown up in Auckland your fine mats look like this’ (2014), was also created during her time studying at Elam. It is an early example of her hybrid-textile works that contemporise traditional Pacific making practices, such as tivaevae (Cook Islands embroidery), ‘ie toga (Sāmoan fine mats) and koloa (Tongan fine mats) to explore ideas around home and identity.

Though created a decade later, Serene’s recent work, ‘Auo le fete Pepe Keke’ (2023), leans on the same guiding principles of humour, colour, language and texture. The Sāmoan words serve as both the title and the subject woven into the surface of the work, translating in English as ‘don’t be afraid baby cake’.

While retaining the same technique used in her earlier work, the notable difference is the more intimate scale, which Serene has turned to as her practice has evolved alongside the growth of her young family.

Recent works have incorporated even more vibrancy in their palettes, inspired by the children’s books and toys that surround her at home. The smaller scale has also allowed her to continue her practice within a domestic space, creating punchy pieces that are banner-like in their format and feeling of declaration.
As mid-career artists, both Claudia and Serene have boundless room to pivot and grow in their approaches to making from here. Their recent works demonstrate how the collection can grow and expand alongside them.

Madeleine Harvey, Art collection adviser