Artist Floor Talk: Caroline McQuarrie

Saturday, February 26, at 11am | Join us to hear from artist Caroline McQuarrie talk about her exhibition, Prospects Fearful. Free entry, but booking is essential as there are limited spaces for this talk. Click here to book your spot.

Caroline McQuarrie is an interdisciplinary artist who has long been exploring personal and familial histories, and the role that the photograph and the hand-crafted textile might play in representing or questioning these narratives. Curiosity about what is tangible and what is intangible, what traces remain, and whose lived experiences are valued enough to be recorded, are strong drivers for her practice.

Caroline has spent several years photographing sites of 1800s colonial settler mining industry — tunnels, tailings, inclines, paths – places of man-altered hills, rivers and bush. These are sites of former prosperity, of once bustling industries, sites of change and of trauma. Caroline often focuses her gaze on the historical and ecological legacies of the area around her family home in Te Tai Poutini, the West Coast of the South Island.

In her embroidered and textile projects, Caroline enjoys bringing to light less known or documented stories. These experiences and stories were more domestic and ephemeral, often overlooked, and now mostly lost to the annals of history.

Caroline McQuarrie was born in Greymouth in 1975 and has a Master of Fine Arts from Toi Rauwharangi College of Creative Arts Massey University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Photography), from the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, Ōtautahi, Christchurch. She is a lecturer at Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts Massey University. Recent exhibitions include: The New Sun, Jhana Millers, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, 2021; Prospects Fearful with Shaun Matthews, The Suter, Nelson 2018; Homewardbounder, Enjoy Gallery, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington; and No Town, Te Uru, Tāmaki Makaurau 2015, and Aratoi, Masterton 2014. Her works are in the collection of the Suter Gallery and the Wellington City Council.