vanessa arthur

Vanessa Arthur lives and works in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand

Arthur completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts at Whitireia NZ in 2011.
On graduating she was selected as artist in residence at Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, Wellington, and awarded the 2011 Fingers Gallery Graduate Award.
A participant in the Handshake project, she completed a two year mentorship with Australian Goldsmith David Neale in 2015.

Vanessa has exhibited both throughout New Zealand and internationally.
In 2018 she was selected for Iwa: New Zealand Makers – an exhibition of nine featured perspectives in New Zealand contemporary jewellery, spanning four decades of practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Brought together for Munich Jewellery Week, these practices articulated a relationship to one another as tributaries to a larger, transforming field of practice.

Vanessa’s work is directly influenced by her regular documentation and excavation of spaces within the built urban environment, the spaces between planning. The often overlooked elements within the streetscape are her muse; buffed walls, wet cement scrawling, fragments and objects left behind in the rush. An exploration of the marks we make and the mark we make.

‘At first glance, unplanned spaces within the urban landscape may seem stuck in a kind of limbo, melancholic & lifeless.
To me they epitomise a space between just before and a moment after.
A waymark.
Spaces where the past, present and future merge, something ineffable… a site of subtle awe.’