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Conversation with Mandy Jakich from Creative Matters Podcast
You can have a listen to a recent podcast conversation with Mandy Jakich from Creative Matters Podcast, here, Creative Matters with Angela Rowe.
Here’s what Mandy had to say;
“We have such a wonderful chat about the real, sometimes challenging, life of an artist: applying for funding; maintaining multiple income streams; creating work that you’re passionate about but might not be able to be sold easily; selling work without being represented by a gallery; the merits of entering art awards and so much more. This is a great listen with many tips and opportunities for artists.”
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Applications for the Creative Practice 2024 summer workshops are open!
Creative Practice will host two fully funded workshops for artists and creatives based in Northland. We will meet every two weeks, alternating between Creative Northland Offices and zoom, read more for details.
Do you want to create a body of work for an exhibition? Submit work to an art award? More confidently speak or write about your work? Do you want to restart your art making? Have you been working solo and would appreciate some critical feedback? Do you have questions on exhibiting or selling your work? Would you like to connect with other artists?
Creative Practice Workshops are for you!
Designed to support artists and recent arts graduates with developing their independent creative practices, culminating in the opportunity to exhibit in a group exhibition in Whangārei. The goal of the workshops is to equip artists to engage confidently and professionally with their communities, via supportive connections between practitioners, a deep dive into their studio practice to understand their processes and provide a supportive space to test ideas and present their work.
These workshops are funded, so there is no cost to participants, only a commitment to attend and give time to your work and the rest of the group while we work together. Artists and creatives must be based in tai Tokerau Northland.
Summer workshop series ~ for artists and creatives
After reviewing our processes and listening to your feedback we are offering two streams of group workshops for artists and creatives based in Northland. We will meet every two weeks, alternating between Creative Northland Offices and zoom, we aim to make this as easy as possible to show up for. We ask participants to do their best to attend all meet ups, be ready to share and learn with and from each other.
Creative Practice Wednesdays 5:30pm – 7pm
Fortnightly at Creative Northland Offices Whangārei and on zoom from Wednesday 28th Feb – Wednesday 5th June 5:30pm – 7pm.
Maximum ten places
Creative Practice Saturdays 10:30am – 12pm
Fortnightly at Creative Northland Offices Whangārei and on zoom from Saturday 2nd March – Saturday 8th June 10:30am – 12pm.
Maximum ten places
Key dates
registrations close Friday 19th January 2024
places will be confirmed Friday 2nd February 2024
To apply:
The workshops are designed for a maximum of ten participants. Interested artists are asked to provide:
4 – 6 images of your work, completed work or in process studio work
An artist CV or exhibition experience
Goals or challenges you wish to work on
Complete this form to register for Creative Practice Wednesdays 5:30pm – 7pm
Complete this form to register for Creative Practice Saturdays 10:30am – 12pm
Questions?If you have any questions, find online forms challenging or are unsure if this is for you, please reach out!
Contact Angela at:
creativementoring.northland@gmail.com
To complement the group workshops we also offer short courses and zoom workshops, watch this space for announcements.
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Selfie with teacup, finalist in Molly Morpeth Canaday Award – Painting & Drawing 2023
Hearing Selfie with teacup made the MMCA 2023 was a highlight of this year, it was my biggest stitched selfie to date, and I took a punt to submit the reverse of the embroidery as the front of the work. Even better than I had hoped, the work was hung within the gallery space so it could be seen from all sides.
Selfie with teacup, 2023, found textile dyed with avocado skins and seeds, pencil, embroidery thread.
Selfie with teacup, 2023, found textile dyed with avocado skins and seeds, pencil, embroidery thread. Hung in the Shutter Room Gallery for the Object, group exhibition, June 2023.
Artist statement
Countering ideas commonly associated with Selfies as being superficial and momentary, the process of drawing and embroidering slows the process and creates a permanent object from a fleeting digital image. Choosing to reveal the usually hidden back of this embroidery, I invite the viewer to see what I would usually conceal, the image that forms without my attention, perhaps the hidden or subconscious self.
In ‘Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits’ Frances Borzello claims the Selfie lacks agency, relegating the Selfie to poorly executed folk art. I disagree, Selfies can engage with the traditions of self portraiture, and can reveal other narratives that connect with current issues and concerns.
Borzello, Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits, 2016.
Photo from the awards night by Maraea Timutimu. I wasn’t able to make it down to see the exhibition, but by all accounts, Selfie with teacup was in good company.
Unexpectedly, the work ended up in Art New Zealand, Autumn 2023!
Selfie with teacup, 2023, detail. Found textile dyed with avocado skins and seeds, pencil, embroidery thread.
Selfie with teacup, 2023, detail. Found textile dyed with avocado skins and seeds, pencil, embroidery thread.
specs:
Dimensions, 920 mmw x 1120 mmh
Natural dying, drawing and hand embroidery
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Applications for the Creative Practice 2023 Winter Workshops Series are open!
About the Creative Practice workshops
Designed to support emerging artists, working artists and recent arts graduates with developing their independent creative practices, culminating in the opportunity to exhibit in a group exhibition in Whangārei. The goal of the workshops is to equip artists to engage confidently and professionally with their communities, via supportive connections between practitioners, a deep dive into their studio practice to understand their processes and provide a supportive space to test ideas and present their work.
There is no cost to participants, only a commitment to attend and give time to your work while we work together.
Here’s some thoughts from an artist I worked with recently:
“I think Angela’s mentoring workshop takes people, including me, by surprise. That’s because it’s not designed to be only a passing-on of information and resources, which are, by the way, plentiful and useful, but as a co-built space for artists to practice first-hand collaboration and constructive critique with their peers. The offering and asking of critique from other artists has been a healthy challenge for me and being in this “out of comfort zone” gave me insight on internal blockages that are in the way of my success as an artist. One leaves the workshops confident that there’s plenty of possibilities out there, easily at hand, and really it’s just a matter to try them one after the other until something works. Angela is outstandingly available and supportive, always replying to messages and emails in record time and always with useful and practical answers to all kinds of questions.”
~ Cecilia De Donatis
This is the first in a series of 4 intensive 8 week workshops to be offered at no charge to participants, thanks to funding from Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s Regeneration Fund.
Workshops and complementary short courses will be rolled out between July 2023 – June 2024.
Key Dates:
winter workshop series ~ for artists and creatives
eight weeks
Saturdays 10am – 12pm
Saturday July 29th – 16th September 2023
maximum six places, hosted at Creative Northland and online
Creative Northland meetings will be 29th July, 5th, 19th August, 2nd and 16th September 2023. Zoom meets will be 12th, 26th August, and 9th Sept. Artists are required to attend both IRL and online meetings as far as possible (except sickness or emergencies!).
This is the first in a series of 4 intensive 8 week workshops to be offered at no charge to participants, thanks to funding from Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s Regeneration Fund. Workshops and complementary short courses will be rolled out between July 2023 – June 2024.
Key Dates:
winter workshop series ~ for artists and creatives
eight weeks
Saturdays 10am – 12pm
Saturday July 29th – 16th September 2023
maximum six places, hosted at Creative Northland and online
registrations close Friday 14th July
places will be confirmed Monday 17th July
Application process:
This process provides insight into your work, your ideas and any challenges you have. It enables me to tailor the workshops to meet the needs of the participants and make the best use of our time together.
Please complete the form, if you have any questions, find online forms challenging or are unsure if this is for you, please reach out!
Contact Angela at:
creativementoring.northland@gmail.com
What I need from you
The workshops are designed for a maximum of six participants. Interested artists are asked to provide:
4 – 6 images of your work, completed work or in process studio work
An artist CV or exhibition experience
Goals or challenges you wish to work on
Complete this application form, Creative Practice 2023 Winter Workshops Series
supported by
Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage Regeneration Fund
About Angela
Angela has been working in the arts for over 20 years. Her experience includes maintaining a creative practice, studio research, project writing, project management and delivery, exhibition curation, writing and planning. Angela brings a collaborative approach to her work and understands the reality of working in the arts in Aotearoa.
Angela’s creative practice includes curation and storytelling across performance, installation, photography, drawing, and textile works. Angela is particularly interested in the future of arts in Aotearoa and how to create a more equitable and sustainable arts industry. Angela studied through Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design, completing her MFA in 2020.
Angela’s work has been exhibited in Auckland, Whangārei, Dunedin, Nelson, Whakatāne, Morrinsville, Waiheke, Oamaru and Wellington. Recently, her work has made finals or won art awards across Aotearoa, including The Wallace Awards 2020, Changing Threads 2021 and 2022, The Walker and Hall Waiheke Art Awards 2022, and the Molly Morpeth Canaday Award for Painting and Drawing in 2019 and 2023.
Angela has had successful funding applications to Creative New Zealand, Manatu Taonga, Creative Communities and Lotteries Community grants scheme. She is on the committee of the Shutter Room Gallery Collective, serving as Gallery Curator and has delivered exhibition or performance projects in Auckland, Whangārei and Dunedin.
You can find Creative Practice on Instagram.
You can follow Angela on instagram.
You can subscribe to my substack.
Ngā mihi,
Angela
Creative Practice
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Piecework and Keep Care in the Walker and Hall Waiheke Art Award 2022
Really excited to have two of my works make the finals of the Walker and Hall Waiheke Art Award for 2022, visit the link for full details including the full catalogue here.
Piecework 2022 Angela Rowe, detail. My practice focuses on care activities and textiles that remind us of shared experiences that form identity and become memory.
Piecework 2022 Angela Rowe, detail. Piecework, an exploded book, has drawings of ceramic fragments my daughter found and collected, creating a narrative between the objects as she reassembled them. These ceramic fragments have featured in my work a number of times, as objects themselves and as images for drawing.
Piecework 2022 Angela Rowe, detail. Keep Care is a pair of handmade tea towels, embroidered with objects I’ve found and saved with my nana and my children.
Keep Care, 2022, Angela Rowe detail of the golden oyster. Both of these works are on textiles I have hand dyed with avocado skins and stones, a process that I refined during 2020, it takes two to three days, to produce a reliable die bath and treat the textiles. Every batch while consistently brewed produces colour variation and is unique, separate batches of avocado stones produces a stunning pink – peach colour, whereas the avocado skins give a darker, more tannin hue.
Keep Care, 2022, Angela Rowe detail of the dragonfly from Mair Park. 
Keep Care, 2022, Angela Rowe. -
Spring Creative practice workshop 2022
Held at Creative Northland offices and online.
Dates: 10 weeks Tuesdays 3-5pm, 20th September – 22nd November (online dates are yet to be confirmed).
About the Creative Practice workshops
Designed to support emerging artists and recent arts graduates with developing their independent creative practices, culminating in a group exhibition in Whangarei. The goal of the workshops is to equip artists to engage confidently and professionally with their communities, via supportive connections between practitioners, a deep dive into their studio practice to understand their processes and provide a supportive space to test ideas and present their work.
We cover essentials skills for professional practice including;
● Critical feedback on studio practice
● Approaches to research
● Applying for grants and funding
● How to write artist statements
● Working collaboratively
● Project management
● Sustainable practice in the arts industry
The workshops are tailored to meet the needs of the participants and are adapted for online platforms. After the conclusion of the 10 weeks, I continue to offer support and mentoring as we work towards the final group exhibition in 2023. The artists who participated in the 2021 workshops were able to engage with each other and support each other’s respective practices, as they actively worked towards new ideas, making goals for new bodies of work and testing new ideas. So great to see them work together and support each other so generously. A key part of the workshops is looking at other artists, learning from each other as peers, as well as looking at each artist’s practice in the broader arts historical context. Each artist is challenged and encouraged to extend their ideas and studio work.
These are some thoughts by artists on my process and how I’ve helped them with their practice:
Jolene Pascoe says;
“Having been part of the mentoring workshops with Angela I have found myself working consistently and frequently towards my goal of being an artist.
I have found this workshop has hugely complimented my recent completion of the Bachelor of Applied Arts. Learning more about the practical steps you need to take in the creative arts sector has been exactly what I have needed to keep my own art practice alive and to understand a lot more about the creative industry aspect of being a working artist.
This is one of the best things I’ve done! Angela’s style and approach to the work we need to do for these workshops is educational, helpful and knowledgeable and she understands each of our individual needs well through her thoughtful observation of us as artists and what we are trying to achieve. Angela is a great mentor and I would highly recommend these continue for future artists”
Catherine Davies Colley (MFA) says;
The 10-week Art Group mentored by Angela Rowe, was central to the re engagement with my practice. Angela’s thought-provoking comments, contextual guidance and extensive knowledge base of art ideologies have activated me and my making. This mentored group allowed me to shift and have confidence again in my thoughts and work removing the vacuum I was inhabiting. Angela guided the group with structured topics and discussion. The outcomes are evident in the contextual practices of individuals of the group.
Ros Craw says;
Grateful is probably a better word but kind of like thankfulness…..
What has this group and you given me/ meant to me…..
– a supportive encouraging safe group to work with- great discussions, new artists to look at, ideas to think about, books to read- other ways of looking at my work, seeing how it’s seen through different eyes-has enabled me to believe in myself more and keep working on my ideas-acceptance (really important for lots of different reasons)-challenges, to try different ways of working, think about different perspectives ….are thrown but in a very kind way-the chance to network with even more like-minded people in the area- friends now for sure
All interested artists are asked to prepare some images of their work, so I can see what your studio practice is like, what your experience in arts (any time studying, exhibition experience etc). It’s really important to know what artists I work with are wanting to achieve from our workshops.
The main requirement of artists I work with is a commitment to their practice, making time for the workshops as well as their own making, as much as possible.
Learn more about the group I mentored, Collective Practice, and our experience shared here:
You can also find us on instagram here:
If you are interested in participating in this next series of workshops, please contact me directly at:
These workshops have been made possible by the generous support of Whangārei District Council and Creative Northland.
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Fantasy Cheerleader at Changing Threads 2022
This stitch work is part of a project begun during lockdown 2020. During isolation from people I loved, I was using selfies to see myself, and to be seen with my significant connections. The selfies may mark a pause, such as a birthday, or they may represent a period of loss or grief. Some capture a time I felt vulnerable, distressed or particularly distant, I see the images as a connecting device in my relationships with others, but also vital in understanding myself.
Countering ideas commonly associated with selfies as being superficial and momentary, the process of drawing and embroidering slows the process and creates a permanent object from a fleeting digital image. I liken the embroideries to drawings, or pages of a journal which form a series of self portraits.
Fantasy Cheerleader, 2022, Angela Rowe.
Found textile dyed with avocado skins and seeds, pencil, embroidery thread, dimensions: 610 mmw x 760 mmhMore on Changing Threads 2022 exhibition here, Changing Threads Contemporary Textile Fibre Art Award.
Fantasy Cheerleader, detail, 2022, Angela Rowe.
Found textile dyed with avocado skins and seeds, pencil, embroidery thread, dimensions: 610 mmw x 760 mmhThe work used more than 8700 metres of black embroidery thread, and I stitched it over the course of two months. The textile is dyed using avocado stones and skins, and is also a long process involving first creating the dye bath in pots, then steeping the cloth in pots over a 24 – 48 hour period, rinsed and air dried.
More on the beginnings of this project can be found here, where I wrote about the first Lockdown portraits.
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Cut with the kitchen knife, New works by Whangārei art group, Collective Practise
Coming to Reyburn House Art Gallery in June 2022
Opening 5-7pm Tuesday 7th June
10 – 31 Reyburn House Lane, Whangārei Town Basin
Cut with the Kitchen Knife is a group exhibition featuring new works by members of the art group Collective Practise. It is curated by Angela Rowe. The exhibition showcases work across a range of media including paper, ceramics, textile, printmaking, sculpture, installation and performance.
In 1919 the German artist Hannah Höch (1889–1978) hung a collage in a group exhibition. The collage, a complex and tumultuous work, was titled Cut with the Kitchen Knife, Dada through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany. Using photomontage Höch cut and reassembled images to comment on the inequalities faced by women in the arts at institutional and interpersonal levels at the time.
The members of Collective Practise meet regularly to share studio research, reading, and talk through ideas central to their mahi toi. Working together in this way Collective Practise has created Cut with the Kitchen Knife, to share work that discusses their experience of contemporary social issues such as modern motherhood, relationships to place, each other, and materials in their art practice.
As part of the exhibition, Collective Practise offers a series of free workshops, an artists panel discussion and an opening night, covid permitting.
Collective Practise is;
Catherine Davies-Colley, Ros May, Alex Moyse, Jolene Pascoe, Angela Rowe, and Linette van Greunen.
Email: collectivepractise@gmail.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collective_practise/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/collectivepractise
This exhibition and related events has been made possible by the generous support of Whangārei District Council and the Creative Communities Scheme.
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I used to find dead insects in your pockets for Geoff Wilson Gallery
Presenting new work and a bolder install of my MFA grad show in my home town of Whangarei was an exciting opportunity. I developed two new video works and created larger scale textile pieces in response to the new space.
The work was at Geoff Wilson Gallery, opening 5th August 2020, and ran between 6th August – 4th September 2020.
Convection, 2020. Video, 58 seconds.
Rainbow skinks, fan shells and wheel shells.
Keep care, 2020. Video, 123 mins.
I used to find dead insects in your pockets functions as an archive in flux, by attempting to make the absent visible or the lost tangible. Sue Breakell describes the fluid nature of working with an archive as having no “fixed meaning … we may know the action that created the trace, but its present and future meanings can never be fixed.”1 By choosing what to emphasise and what remains concealed, I seek to add further layers of meaning by re- contextualising these objects. I may manipulate them and so disrupt familiar associations, alternatively I may reproduce and repeat, the object then becomes the formal representation of a relationship; a social object.
These social objects allow me to figure out my relationships; I find ceramic fragments and mangrove seeds in the bottom of the washing machine when removing a load of my children’s clothes. Objects discovered and kept carefully in pockets, collected, valued and also forgotten. Relationships, traces of care and attention are entangled and mirrored in objects. Shells collected with Nana, or was it my friend or with my daughter? The objects resist conventional classification or containment. The process of working with these objects maybe what re- establishes intimacy and connection, as distances are crossed, memories slip in time and place. New modes of connection are added to the old and bonds are strengthened or left to slip away. It is the traces of ‘this life together’ which remain in the objects I have installed.
Fetish-like, these objects potentially offer up the spirit or trace of a relationship (debris) from a moment or place. Performing as prompts for memories, Marie Shannon notes that “ordinary objects can be very powerful.”2 The everyday object is embedded in daily life, the small rituals we participate in most often. Stories are told and retold about the shells, the hair, skinks, seeds, et cetera. The blanket, folded and unfolded appears to be at rest, leaving traces of careful hands folding neatly and putting to one side. Storing the objects and living plants in jars evokes intentions of care, collection, and preservation. Living ferns and empty shells share space, resisting formal containment and classification.
Physicist David Bohm believed that shared meaning created through dialogue exchanged is the ‘glue’ that holds us all (people and society) together, allowing bonds to form over time. 3 Working with my extended community so as to create an archive of objects becomes a kind of social practice and a way to work out and understand relationships, ‘meaning making’ and ‘sharing meaning’ in the form of a dialogical exchange that Bohm describes.4 This time the exchange and sharing happens between object and person, then person and person, and again between person and object. It is this kind of connection and exchange that has informed my practice, permitting many different forms across time and place, as seen when sewing Nana’s net curtains. It may result in many traces in the form of objects, as objects can hold meaning and significance across generation and place. In particular, I am working with my Nana, my children and my intimate circle of friends, as we exchange a type of care dialogue.
Notes:
1 Breakell, Perspectives.
2 Monsalve, The Art of Domestic Life
3 Bohm, On Dialogue.
4 Ibid.
Many thanks to Jonathan Paul Hemsworth, for the photos from the opening night and performance. -
Selfies stitched in Lockdown 2020
Selfies stitched in Lockdown 2020, in the 29th Wallace Awards.
This is an abstract from a paper for Context magazine, published for the Costume and Textile Association of New Zealand.
I made my final submission for my MFA in Auckland at Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design in February 2020, and March was a month to work towards an exhibition that came from my research. This exhibition was to open in April, and would include installation, performance and storytelling, perhaps even a collaborative social project. This was to be a solo show in my hometown of Whangarei but of course, 2020 would unfold in ways no one could plan for. I stepped into a project that challenged me in ways I did not anticipate.
Intimacy and distance are constantly negotiated throughout the process of stitching the selfies. Shifting from the photographic image to the pencil on cloth and then embedding the image and line with thread. This process pushes me away from myself and retains a sense of safety in what I chose to share publicly. I creates a safe space to re-present images of myself.
Selfies stitched in Lockdown 2020, detail, at the Pah Homestead, Auckland.
As my masters’ research paused, I was speculating on new questions that emerged; how can formal objects exist in a social or relational practice? And can one engage in dialogue with objects and people, and socially with the object in the absence of the person? This project enabled me to view my work and research through another lens.
Selfies stitched in Lockdown 2020, detail, at the Pah Homestead, Auckland.
With constraints on physical movement, who I spent my days with and where we were based became the locus. With lockdown, my closest and most intimate relationships became paramount. My research focus, with a basis in social interactions and exchange had to shift to new modes of connecting and ultimately a new subject matter.
Selfies stitched in Lockdown 2020. Found textile dyed with avocado skins and seeds, ballpoint pen, pencil, embroidery thread. 29th Wallace Awards, Pah Homestead, Auckland.
Six selfies from this project, Selfies stitched in Lockdown 2020, is a finalist in the 29th Wallace Art Awards, and is part of the travelling exhibition during 2020 and 2021. It is at the following venues:
Wallace Arts Centre, Pah Homestead
15 September – 15th November.
(The Salon des Refusés finishes on Oct 25th)Pātaka Art+Museum
Official opening Sunday 6th of December, ending Sunday 28 February 2021.March – May 2021.
Selfies stitched in Lockdown 2020, detail, at the Pah Homestead, Auckland.
artist, writer, curator, mentor
Angela Rowe 