OPENING EVENT: Wednesday 12th April, 5.30-7.30pm

New work by Emma Fitts.  Looking to early botanical recordings, Mary Gartside’s 1800s essays on colour and Anne Carson’s verse novel The Autobiography of Red, PETAL thinks through the psychological and sensory experience of colour, movement and texture. 

 In these new works canvas is painted front and back, wrapped, looped, pleated and draped in forms that reference garments, looms and landscapes. Materials include canvas, mesh, felt, painted scrim, rods, rope with the works oscillating on the edges of painting, sculpture and textiles. 

Emma Fitts’ practice moves across the disciplines of painting, photography and sculpture. Fitts studied Fine Art at the University of Canterbury, Ōtautahi, prior to Masters study at the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland. Major solo presentations of Fitts' work include “In the Rough: Parts 1, 2 & 3” at Te Uru (2019) and “From Pressure to Vibration: The Event of a Thread” at The Dowse (2017). Fitts returned to Ōtautahi in 2014 as the Olivia Spencer Bower recipient, was a McCahon House resident for winter 2018 and completed the Fulbright-Wallace residency at The Headlands Center for the Arts, California, USA in 2019. New work was featured in "Touching Sight" curated by Melanie Oliver for Christchurch Art Gallery in 2020 and in 2022 in "Evolutions of Galaxies" at Monash University in Melbourne. Most recently Fitts exhibited “Lapping at Your Door” - a major courtyard commission at Objectspace 2022 - 2023.