Whakatāne Community Board Gallery

Emily Hartley-Skudder has recently graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with first class honours from the University of Canterbury, and since 2009 she has exhibited in a range of galleries and project spaces across New Zealand. Hartley-Skudder has recently concluded a solo exhibition with Christchurch Art Gallery’s Outer Spaces programme, and is now represented by {Suite} Gallery, Wellington.

Artist Statement

Tiny replicas of the ordinary entice us to project our fantasies onto them, accentuating a general preoccupation with recreating aspects of our everyday lives. It is this replication of the commonplace that fascinates me, the incessant doubling of activity. My use of miniatures promotes the creation of the uncanny and subtly peculiar, the seemingly standard objects gradually separate from their initial reading. Suspiciously pleasant, the paintings become a generalised reproduction of aspects of our routine existence, exalted through obsessive rendering demanding such time and care. Simultaneously generic and personalised, my works unashamedly draw on the themed, decorative and ‘stock’ image. With their quaint objects and ‘delightful’ bright colours, they become domestic scenes perfect for the domestic space, signalling the often unavoidable role of paintings as decor. They are still lifes, but the objects depicted are painted from photographs of imitations; fakes twice removed, celebrating the deceptive act of representation.