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Cushla Donaldson

The Precariats, 2015

Steel, aluminium & mixed media

The Precariats is Donaldson’s first large scale outdoor work. Donaldson wants to continue the conversations explored within her last exhibition “Supergroup” at the Audio Foundation, 2014, Auckland, and to highlight the role of financial support.

For The Precariats she has collaborated with sponsors and supporters and their financial contributions, ideas and identity have been translated into sculptures, text and objects situated within a large pyramid frame she has constructed. It talks to her generation’s positioning in making creative work but also the historical systems of patronage. She wishes to give exposure to a seemingly ‘unartistic’ conversation, and one in which her gender is often disadvantaged. Viewers are invited to ‘play’ the sculpture during the exhibition. Influenced by the aesthetics of mobiles, window hangings, sun catchers and dioramas the combination of words and objects are also playable as percussive instruments and will be included in a number of performances by bands and musicians which will be held within the sculpture during the headland Sculpture on the Gulf event.

Cushla Donaldson

Cushla Donaldson is an Elam graduate and graduated with an MFA from Goldsmiths College, London in 2007, supported by the Anne Reid scholarship from the University of Auckland.

She has become known for her witty and panoptic engagement with the gendered hierarchy of aesthetics and their applications. She has exhibited regularly in both New Zealand and Europe; recent solo exhibitions include Feminine Touches at Ferari Gallery, Auckland, 2012; Cushla Donaldson & Fisher and Paykel present The Truth at 30 upstairs Gallery, Wellington, 2013 and Supergroup at Audio Foundation, Auckland, 2014.