Louise Menzies: In an Orange My Mother Was Eating

2018 Frances Hodgkins Fellow Louise Menzies is interested in things as they are in the world. In this exhibition, her delicate appreciation for what already exists has materialised as a series of distinct works made during her year-long Fellowship and subsequent engagement with the Hocken Collections.

The playful exhibition title, In an orange my mother was eating, forms the opening line of “Where was I born?” a poem published by Joanna Margaret Paul in 1981. As two children recount to Paul where they might have come from (in a mirror; hot fire; in the cake tin; in the earth; in my bones), we are reminded of all the objects—and images of objects—around us that form our unique experiences of life.

The Frances Hodgkins Fellowship was established by the University of Otago Council in 1962, largely through the efforts of Dunedin philanthropists that contributed funding to support the Fellowship. The Fellowship was intended to ‘encourage artists in the practice and advancement of their art’ by providing them with a studio and a year’s stipend, to aid and encourage painters, sculptors and multi-media artists, while at the same time associating them with the life of the University and fostering an interest in the Arts within the University. It was named after Dunedin-born Frances Hodgkins, one of New Zealand's most distinguished painters.