Nurturing Soil

In this exhibition Nurturing Soil, watercolour, oil paint and embroidery are used to explore the ways these materials can reflect the subject, and the metaphors within this. The artist nurtures, curates and gardens each brush-mark and stitch, much like her ancestors have tended to flourishing gardens.  
 
‘My grandmother owned a Bromeliad business, carried on by my mother today. This matrilineal relationship to exotic plants and colonial gardens provides passage and sensitivity to the garden as a domestic space of peace, identity and comfort. This is balanced by a critique of the way these histories have subjugated women within the limits of convention.' 

About the Artist

Molly Timmins (Ngāpuhi, Pākehā, b.1998) is a painter based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her work explores gardens as both an environmental physical place, and as a painted subject throughout art history. The artist’s practice takes influence from her Ngāpuhi and Pākehā whakapapa, presenting a nuanced conversation between the two. Referencing her own heritage alongside considered painting techniques Timmins navigates both garden and painting history, and the way in which women have historically existed in these spaces within Aotearoa in the last century.