Faith McManus — Ngapuhi, Ngai Takoto

Born 1963, Wellington, Faith is of Maori, Irish, English and Croatian descent. She was raised by her maternal grandparents in the Far North of New Zealand. Faith has a Dip FA (Hons) from Otago Polytechnic and an MFA from RMIT Melbourne, and is a lecturer at NorthTec, Whangarei. She has exhibited in NZ, USA and Australia at dealer and public galleries, and has work in public and private collections in NZ and overseas. She writes:

Much of my work investigates ideas about whakapapa [genealogy, lineage and heritage, hence identity], cultural memory and personal narrative. I describe my process as ‘tutulage’. I play with the conventions of woodcut, sign and ornamentation to construct new interrelationships. As an artist I draw upon my Maori and European heritage. My work is based on the interconnectedness of ancestry, myth and culture. I love stories, pattern and colour. These elements are layered visually through some combination of print process. Mainly I work with woodcut and painterly applications of ink. I am always trying to push the medium; can I make it bigger, maybe sculptural, sewn, woven, animated etc. My recent work has been made in response to moving to Te Kopuru and living above the river. As well as being a committed artist I am passionate about education. I lecture at NorthTec in Whangarei, teaching drawing, printmaking and painting.

Jen Webb is Distinguished Professor of Creative Practice, and Director of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research at the University of Canberra. Recent publications include Researching Creative Writing (Frontinus, 2015), Art and Human Rights: Contemporary Asian Contexts (Manchester UP, 2016), and the OUP bibliography entry for Bourdieu (2017). Her poetry includes Stolen Stories, Borrowed Lines (Mark Time, 2015), Sentences from the Archive (Recent Work Press, 2016), and Moving Targets (Recent Work Press, 2018). She is Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery project ‘So what do you do? Graduates in the Creative and Cultural Industries’ (DP160101440).