Justine Walker
For Sale: baby shoes, never worn
24
August 2017
24
Aug
2017
8
Sep 2017
Gallery 2
For Sale: baby shoes, never worn
Justine Walker
24
August 2017
24
August
2017
8
September 2017
Gallery 2
New Zealand artist Justine Walker follows an interest in feminine subjectivity and identity. Drawing heavily on her own experience of the world with a particular interest in the expectations and limitations that society puts on all of us based on our gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity and so on. Using photography, video, sculpture, drawing and craft to investigate how women are responding to these expectations and what society is creating in reality.Walker wanted to be a mother, but after years of fertility treatments has found herself childless. ‘For Sale: baby shoes, never worn’ consists of video and photographic works responding to this journey. Some refer to the endless, repeated attempts to conceive, hoping with all fingers and toes crossed, for a different result. Others the disenfranchised grief, the shame of giving your life over to this at all costs. And the search for what to do now, fantasizing about missed bedtime stories and birthday parties. Together these works give you a glimpse into the absence and loss of something that never existed.
New Zealand artist Justine Walker follows an interest in feminine subjectivity and identity. Drawing heavily on her own experience of the world with a particular interest in the expectations and limitations that society puts on all of us based on our gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity and so on. Using photography, video, sculpture, drawing and craft to investigate how women are responding to these expectations and what society is creating in reality.Walker wanted to be a mother, but after years of fertility treatments has found herself childless. ‘For Sale: baby shoes, never worn’ consists of video and photographic works responding to this journey. Some refer to the endless, repeated attempts to conceive, hoping with all fingers and toes crossed, for a different result. Others the disenfranchised grief, the shame of giving your life over to this at all costs. And the search for what to do now, fantasizing about missed bedtime stories and birthday parties. Together these works give you a glimpse into the absence and loss of something that never existed.
Justine Walker
Justine Walker lives and works in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand). She has an MFA from Massey University, New Zealand. Her work is featured on CIRCUIT! Artist Film and Video, Aotearoa, New Zealand.Walker was included in CURRANTS at A.I.R Gallery, New York and has had solo shows at FELTspace, Adelaide, and SEVENTH, Melbourne.Walker’s previous solo shows include where our bodies hit the world at play_station, Wellington, NZ; For Sale: baby shoes, never worn at Toi Poneke, Wellington, NZ and Is this Enough? at Blue Oyster, Dunedin, NZ. She has also been included in numerous group shows at artist run spaces and public galleries including Whakatane Museum & Arts, Whakatane, NZ; MEANWHILE, Wellington, NZ; Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington, NZ; Hirschfeld Gallery, City Gallery Wellington, NZ; High St Project, Christchurch, NZ; and The Engine Room, Wellington, NZ. Her work is held in public and private collections including Nga Taonga Sound & Vision, NZ.