Bio

Emma Fitts is an Ōtautahi Christchurch-based artist whose work has been described as ‘varicoloured, captivating and referential assemblages pertaining to the body.‘ She frequently places her artworks in dialogue to a lineage of early-twentieth-century women artists from Aotearoa, including Edith Collier, Frances Hodgkins and Olivia Spencer Bower. In 2018 she was awarded the Fulbright-Wallace residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

She is a fine-arts graduate of the University of Canterbury (2002) with an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art (2010).

In 2022–23 Fitts was commissioned by Objectspace in Tāmaki Makaurau (in conjunction with the Jan Warburton Charitable Trust) to create an architectural installation titled Lapping at Your Door, which referred to the 1920s modernist canopies of Irish designer and architect Eileen Gray (1878–1976), described by the artist in an interview for artnow.nz. ‘My research methodology continually draws upon multiple practices, disciplines and the biographies of other artists and makers … how they lived, who they got ideas from, what was happening at the time that they lived … about all the intangible factors that combined to aid them in the making of [their art].’

Fitts’ work is notable for the deployment of colour washes and shifting palettes that reference watercolour practice, colour-field painting, and fabric design as found in wall hangings, scenic backdrops and other aligned yet ‘non’ art environments.

The pair of works in Te Haerenga Collection, Loop Study Fade and Loop Study Pink (2022), present as textile ‘soft sculptures’ in relief, with complex, activated perimeters suggesting an interior space while also articulating the structural and conceptual porousness of their mode of construction and making a case for the colour pink in an art context.

Fitts’ work slides between a number of readings within the art and artisanal spaces, without completely conforming to the hierarchies of either or indeed any one genre – all the while acknowledging a lineage of women’s practice that speaks to multi-disciplinary modes of artistic dialogue

Exhibitions

• 2023   Melanie Roger Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: Petal
  
• 2023   Objectspace, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: Lapping at Your Door
  
• 2023   Objectspace, Ōtautahi Christchurch: Living Room
  
• 2022   Aotearoa Art Fair, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: Melanie Roger Gallery
  
• 2022   MADA Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia: Evolutions of Galaxies
  
• 2018   Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waithe: We Do This
  
• 2015   Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki: Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show