Joan Gragg

Last updated

Joan Gragg
Born
Joan Elisabeth Gragg

1943 (age 80–81)
Rarotonga, Cook Islands
Alma mater Auckland University of Technology
Known forpainting, drawing
Notable workThe Nuku (2008)
Styleeveryday life of the Cook Islands

Joan Elisabeth Gragg (also Joan Rolls-Gragg, Joan Rolls Gragg; born 1943) is a senior artist and educator from the Cook Islands, with painting career spanning five decades. [1] She founded the Cook Islands' first and only premier art gallery, Beachcomber Contemporary Art (now Bergman Gallery), in 1991. Gragg graduated with a Master of Art and Design degree from Auckland University of Technology in 2010. [2] [1] There was an opportunity for Gragg to work towards a doctorate in art but she has discounted that for the meantime. [3]

Contents

Gragg's practice centres on the changes to everyday life in the Cook Islands, [4] exploring changes over the decades, with people drifting further apart with the introduction of new technology such as new forms of transportation as opposed to walking, and single plastic chairs instead of traditional wooden benches. [3] According to Gragg, she aims to showcase the "joy, camaraderie, love, and all the other great things that happen in a community in the Cook Islands", [1] and to visually express the humour of the Cook Islands through her art. [5] Gragg also stated she enjoys painting the beauty of everyday life in the Cook Islands. [6] In 2024, Gragg was featured in Aotearoa Art Fair. [7]

Gragg has been exhibited extensively in the Cook Islands, as well as in New Zealand. Her work is held in numerous private and major public collections throughout the Cook Islands as well as New Zealand. Such as Cook Islands National Museum, [8] University of the South Pacific, [9] and the Belinda Fletcher Collection. [10]

Selected solo exhibitions

Selected group exhibitions

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cook Islands</span> Country in the South Pacific Ocean

The Cook Islands is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of 15 islands whose total land area is approximately 236.7 square kilometres (91 sq mi). The Cook Islands' Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers 1,960,027 square kilometres (756,771 sq mi) of ocean. Avarua is its capital.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fatu Feu'u</span> New Zealand artist

Fatu Akelei Feu'u is a noted Samoan painter from the village of Poutasi in the district of Falealili in Samoa. He has established a reputation as the elder statesman of Pacific art in New Zealand.

Wood carving is a common art form in the Cook Islands. Sculpture in stone is much rarer although there are some excellent carvings in basalt by Mike Tavioni. The proximity of islands in the southern group helped produce a homogeneous style of carving but which had special developments in each island. Rarotonga is known for its fisherman's gods and staff-gods, Atiu for its wooden seats, Mitiaro, Mauke and Atiu for mace and slab gods and Mangaia for its ceremonial adzes. Most of the original wood carvings were either spirited away by early European collectors or were burned in large numbers by missionary zealots.

Luise Fong is a Malaysian-born New Zealand artist.

Mahiriki Tangaroa is a New Zealand-born Cook Islands photographer and painter. She is a former director of the Cook Islands National Museum. She is recognised as a leading contemporary Cook Islands artist, and her work is regularly exhibited in galleries in New Zealand and the Cook Islands.

Andy Leleisi’uao is a New Zealand artist of Samoan heritage known for his modern and post-modern Pacific paintings and art. He was paramount winner at the 26th annual Wallace Art Awards in 2017 and awarded a Senior Pacific Artist Award at the Arts Pasifika Awards in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telly Tuita</span> Australian interdisciplinary artist

Telly Bronson Tuita is an Australian and New Zealand interdisciplinary artist of Tongan descent notable for 2020 Molly Morpeth Canaday award for the work Three Graces – U'ufoasini, Akale'a, Ta'alea creating. Later in 2021 becoming a finalist for the National Contemporary Art Award for work Diasporas Children Wellington. Also notable for the creator of the fictional word 'Tongpop' defined as a combination of Tuita's adoration for dazzling, distinct hues and traditional 'Tongan ngatu patterns and religious iconography.'

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reuben Paterson</span> New Zealand artist

Reuben Paterson is a New Zealand artist based in New York, United States known for using glitter in his works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Benjamin Work</span> New Zealand artist of Tongan descent.

Benjamin Work is an artist from New Zealand with Tongan and Scottish heritage. He is well known for his murals across New Zealand, as well as his paintings inspired by his genealogy back to Tonga.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bergman Gallery</span> New Zealand and Cook Islands art gallery

Bergman Gallery is an international commercial art gallery with an original gallery in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, and a second gallery in Auckland, New Zealand. The gallery was first established in 2016 by Ben Bergman in Rarotonga, Cook Islands. Bergman Gallery represents and has represented many significant international artists from New Zealand, Cook Islands and Australia, including Fatu Feu'u, Luise Fong, Andy Leleisi'uao, Reuben Paterson, Michel Tuffery, Billy Apple, Mahiriki Tangaroa, Sylvia Marsters, Benjamin Work, Lucas Grogan, Luke Thurgate and Telly Tuita.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylvia Marsters</span> New Zealand artist

Sylvia Lolita Cathrine Marsters is a New Zealand artist of Cook Islands descent. In 2003, she received a residency in the Cook Islands from Creative New Zealand, and she has exhibited in Rarotonga many times since, as well as in New Zealand, Fiji and New York. Her exhibitions draw big crowds in the Cook Islands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymond Sagapolutele</span> New Zealand photographer

Raymond Eddie Sagapolutele is a New Zealand photographer and visual artist of Samoan descent, active as a photographer since 2003.

Nina Oberg Humphries is a New Zealand multimedia artist and Pacific arts advocate and multimedia artist of Cook Islands descent. Born in Christchurch in 1990, Oberg Humphries graduated from Ilam School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury in 2015.

Louis Joseph Rivera Bretaña is a Filipino-born New Zealand painter and sculptor with roots in Manila and the Visayan province of Iloilo.

Tungane Broadbent is a Cook Islands artist, notable for her tivaevae/tivaivai, with her career making tivaivai spanning five decades. Broadbent founded the O’oa Fabric & Fibre Arts group in 2007, Rarotonga, to teach women to sew tivaivai.

Ian David George (1953–2016) was a New Zealand-born Cook Islands senior painter, carver, educator, and curator of Atiu and Rarotonga descent.

Lucas Grogan is an Australian artist born in Cooma, New South Wales. Grogan is a painter and textile artist currently based in Melbourne, Australia. Grogan exhibited overseas and Australia since 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tanja McMillan</span>

Tanja Jade McMillan is a graffiti artist, and painter of Tahitian and Chinese descent best known as Misery, is currently based in Auckland, New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kay George</span> New Zealand and Cook Islands artist

Kay George is a senior New Zealand and Cook Islands artist based in Rarotonga, Cook Islands. George is a major player in the development of the visual arts in the Cook Islands.

Rhea Maheshwari is an Indian and New Zealand artist notable for her colour palette of blues and purples pastels coloured dreamscapes, she primarily creates large-scale ornamental paintings that resemble tapestries. Maheshwari also draws inspiration from 17th- and 18th-century Mughal miniatures, especially their decorative and ornamental elements.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Religious celebration basis of Gragg's new exhibition". Cook Islands News. 11 April 2023. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
  2. ↑ "Check a graduate's qualification". AUT. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
  3. 1 2 "Joan-artist of the "now"". Cook Islands Herald. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
  4. ↑ "'Work here and enjoy living here'". Cook Islands News. 28 March 2021. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
  5. ↑ Gragg, Joan Elisabeth (2010). Seeing the funny side: focusing on Cook Islands humour in the experience of the religious pageant Nuku (Thesis). Auckland University of Technology.
  6. ↑ Fotheringham, Caleb (28 March 2021). "'Work here and enjoy living here'". Cook Islands News. Retrieved 10 October 2024.
  7. ↑ "What Are Galleries Showing at New Zealand's Biggest Art Fair?". Ocula. 16 April 2024.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 "Joan Gragg - CV". Artsy. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
  9. ↑ University of South Pacific Public Art Collection Catalogue (PDF). Rarotonga, Cook Islands: University of South Pacific. 2022. pp. 22–23.
  10. ↑ williams, Kate Davidson and alden (30 April 2014). "Off the Wall". Stuff. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
  11. ↑ "The Nuku". artguide.artforum.com. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
  12. ↑ "Underneath the Mango Tree". Artnow. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
  13. ↑ "A feast for the eyes: Umukai transports viewers to the Cook Islands". Cook Islands News. 11 May 2024. Retrieved 10 October 2024.
  14. ↑ "Autumn Selection". Artnow. Retrieved 10 October 2024.
  15. ↑ "Ta Mataora | Contemporary Hum". contemporaryhum.com. Retrieved 10 October 2024.
  16. ↑ "Horizon". The Big Idea. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  17. ↑ Magazine, Verve (15 October 2023). "The Art of October". Verve Magazine. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.