Serene ThainWhen sixteen of Auckland's finest female artists decided to get together and form a visual artist cooperative called the Dust Collective it was always going to be a big call to find a space big enough to exhibit all of their work at once. Thus Auckland in September will host two simultaneous exhibitions; Dust 1.2 at AUT's St Paul Street Gallery and Dust:Dispersion at Artstation in Ponsonby.
Collective member Elaine Conway suggests there is a broad range of creative expression on offer: "We have Juliette Laird who crochets fishing line into balls of expanded dust; Juliet Monaghan who invites her audience into a wedding veil to experience the hopes and dreams of brides-to-be, Serene Thain who combs $2 stores to find an array of colourful plastic objects to create intricate Luna Park-like constructions and Jude Graveson who has stretched and dried animal gut to invite a look form the inside."
The women are all graduates of A.U.T, Elim and M.I.T and work in an assortment of media and when naming the collective, liked the analogy that dust moves, settles and inhabits spaces - a perfect segway from the post below. Both exhibitions open on Thursday September 17.
Juliette Laird
Elaine Conway
