Immigrants II

Immigrants II

Kate Coolahan was born in Sydney, Australia in 1929. She immigrated to Aotearoa New Zealand in 1952, and in 1972 became one of the first New Zealand artists to show at the Venice Biennale. Throughout her career, Coolahan had opportunities to travel, learning from print and paper-making experts in Britain, Europe and Japan. Her work is sensitive to the ideological structures within society and provides a rare glimpse of the changes that were fomenting in the South Pacific.

Coolahan’s prints often depict immigrants, especially migrant women, or images and ideas that circulate across different contexts. In Immigrants II, multiple frames or windows are used to partition a series of studies. The top third of the work contains an abstract exploration of light and dark through solid and diffuse forms anchored by a black portal at the base, demonstrating the influence of her early mentor, John Drawbridge.

Another frame contains tamarillos, an introduced fruit which Coolahan would associate with the feminine and the immigrant. A lone figure moves through a stark landscape on the right of the composition, and along the bottom edge of the print there appears to be a series of graphic letters and numbers. Together, these fragments provide windows into the artist’s biography and aesthetic influences. Coolahan trained as a commercial illustrator and often saw herself as an outsider. Here, Coolahan seems to acknowledge the eclecticism of her own experience, demonstrating how diverse influences can coexist.

— Amy Weng, 2023