Tie Three, So Shall It Be

Jen Alexandra

Opening 5pm, Wednesday 17 February | Artist Talk 12pm, Thursday 27 February.

Do you find that there is a spiritual greatness that operates and gives rise to difference within the material realm of deadlines and being able to be transportable – that All-ness, marvelling at its magnificence, and the reflection of the magnificence…?

About the artist

Jen Alexandra's practice combines sculpture, installation, and performance to explore the artists role as querent, and the relationships between human and non-human. She proposes that art can connect with other realms of experience, interpret visions, or serve as a mode of knowledge itself.

Objects, floating ontologically as artefacts and channels for intention, act as transitional objects between places. Alexandra's work honours the natural world as a sacred, living system, critiquing Western scientific paradigms that objectify nature and challenging colonial perspectives that view it as a resource.

For Alexandra, folklore, nature-based worship, and seasonal lore are ways to understand notions of spirit through studio-focused intuitive technologies approaching the unseen and spiritual as both a platform and tool for expanding understanding of creative practice and acts of devotion.

Jen lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch and is a doctoral candidate at University of Canterbury and was the Olivia Spencer Bower Awardee for 2024. contributed to the Speaking Surfaces project at St Paul Street Gallery in 2020, and was an Asia New Zealand Arts Practitioner Fund grant recipient in 2023. Recent solo projects include The Veil is Thin, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (2021), Sisterly at The Dowse Museum (2023) and Tie One, The Spells Begun The Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatū (2024).

Exhibition ends 4pm, Wednesday 12 March.

The Ilam Campus Gallery is generously supported by Three Boys Brewery, Murray and Co, and the University of Canterbury.