Philippa Blair
Philippa Blair has exhibited regularly for most of her long and distinguished career, from early shows across New Zealand in the 1970s, to international solo exhibitions in New York in the 1980s, and significant museum exhibitions and teaching positions in the 1990s in Los Angeles, a city that became her home for twenty years (1995-2014).
In 2020, Philippa was the subject of a major survey exhibition at Te Uru Contemporary Gallery, Waitakere. In her introduction to the exhibition, curator Chloe Geoghegan managed to capture the spirit of the artist’s remarkable career, quoted below.
“In the past 50 years, Philippa Blair has been described as a traveller and a restless spirit, fluent in translating the tumultuous world around her into vibrant observations that are boldly autobiographical but also hum with the familiar rhythms of life. For Blair, the universal is the personal, as she tunes into the world around her, feeling the energy, rhythm and colour of both city streets and nature alike. Shifting light, musical scores, found objects, architectural plans, maps, memories, change, humour, motherhood, love and loss are not exempt from Blair’s all-embracing approach to painting life.
Down under cover, serves as an acknowledgement of Blair’s incredible achievements, and a belated welcome home for a celebrated local artist who continues to challenge the conventional limits of painting in an image-soaked world.”
Philippa Blair was born in Christchurch in 1945. She lives in Auckland. Her works are held in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, University of Auckland Art Collection, The Chartwell Trust Collection, Suter Art Gallery, Nelson, Christchurch Art Gallery, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, Dunedin Art Gallery, National Art Gallery, Canberra, Australia, Long Beach Museum and Riverside Art Museum, Los Angeles. Citibank Collection, New York, Citicorp Collection, New York, General Electric Co. Collection, New York, British Museum, London, UK, Chan Liu Museum, TaoYuan, Taiwan, David Bowie Collection, Great Britain and Switzerland and many, many private collections.
