Courtesy: the artist and Sanderson Contemporary, Auckland.

In her new exhibition Villa Margaux, artist Julia Holderness continues her research into the late artist-designer Florence Weir, presenting a series of ceramic, collage and textile works.

As a gathering point in the South of France in the 1930s, Villa Margaux functioned for Weir and others as an artistic residence for social occasions, holidays and respite. Later in the 1950s, Weir produced a range of tableware named Margaux which was possibly named after the villa. Surrounded by other artists, and absorbed in the idiosyncrasies of place, Weir’s time here would go on to shape her artistic practice. Responding to a written description of the residence, Holderness imagines Weir’s possible outputs and influences and brings together material fragments from this art historical moment.

“Ranging across tableware, watercolours, textiles and wallpaper designs, the works included in Villa Margaux exploit the slippage between fine art and craft, and between artmaking and lived experience.” – Kirsty Baker, Spring 2023 issue of Art New Zealand

Holderness lives and works in Otautahi Christchurch, New Zealand. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury in 2002 and an Honours in Visual Arts at AUT University, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in 2015. In 2022 Holderness completed a Visual Arts PhD in practice-led research at AUT University. Her thesis titled Ever Present Archiving: methodologies for art histories through invention, fabrication and social practice explores archives and their construction of art-historical narratives. Her practice and outputs are often collaborative and she works alongside both historic and current artists. In creating narratives that might or might not have existed – encompassing artists, groups, movements, and exhibitions – her research practice deliberates on the role of fiction in both the collection and interpretation of material histories.

Holderness was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Doctoral Scholarship and won the Glaister Ennor Graduate Art Award in 2016. Other projects include her PhD exhibition Schemes for Vibrant Living at Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery, AUT, The Studio, which was developed for Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2021, Florence & Florence: Other Textile Histories presented at Ilam Campus Gallery in 2018 and Gallery 91 for SCAPE Public Art in 2017. This year Holderness is taking part in the exhibition Living Room, an exhibition with Objectspace Otautahi at the Sir Miles Warren Gallery, curated by Kim Paton and Caroline Billing.

This exhibition will include a text by Thomasin Sleigh.

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