When Annie Mackenzie was a child, a postcard reproduction of the painting Peasant Woman of Bonmahon (1914) sat above the kitchen sink in her parents' house. For her exhibition at the Sarjeant Gallery, Mackenzie seized the opportunity to revisit this painting by Edith Collier, hanging it alongside her own work. Genuine Article is an outcome of Mackenzie's time at Tylee Cottage in 2019, and the exhibition is stamped with the hallmarks of a fruitful artist residency: it nestles itself in the social landscape of Whanganui, and one can sense the sincerity and thrill of the artist as the local context unfolded for her.
Mackenzie's project pays tribute to two artists who spent significant stretches of their lives in Whanganui—Collier (1885-1964) and Joanna Margaret Paul (1945-2003). It also incorporates recovered traces of the Wanganui Woollen Mills (c. 1920-95), once a behemoth of local industry. Together these influences lend this exhibition a transporting fullness—making palpable the weight of many lives and legacies, the intersections of which lie in twentieth-century Whanganui.
by Annie Mackenzie Sarjeant on the
