Musical improvisation has played a critical role in establishing Stella Corkery’s artistic practice, through which she responds to a constant stream of visual information then recompiles it. Evading a set artistic position, Corkery’s recent painting series moves towards a post-Pop sensibility.....Her process which is fast and open to impulse and change, experiments with the idea that we are surrounded by a mass of images and gestures that have been decoded and fragmented, resulting in a reduction of authenticity. In this way, Corkery questions how to attend to human agency – political and individual. (Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show catalogue, Auckland Art Gallery, 2015)

Stella Corkery was born in 1960 and currently lives and works in Auckland. She has an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts (2013) and has been exhibiting both in New Zealand internationally since 1993 in public and private galleries as well as artist run spaces.

Courtesy of Michael Lett.