In her Stoddart Cottage exhibition Purple Cliffs, Blue Hills, Louise Menzies presents a series of new works developed after her time at Karearea Cottage for the Stoddart Cottage-Purau residency in 2023. Menzies’ title and imagery follow Margaret Stoddart’s example, responding to elements of the local landscape in Pātaka o Rākaihautū Banks Peninsula. In one work, the outline of a 19th century boot fragment floats across a ferry timetable, connecting her wanderings to those who came before her. 

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Her textile works printed as scarves allude to something between the pictorial and the portable, and textiles as markers of personal encounters. These connect the specific – the body that might wear them, the place and time they might be worn now – with ancient practices, continuous through time and across territories.  A branch of Menzies’ family have lived on the peninsula since the 1870s, and she has long been captivated by the story of J.H. Menzies’ regular walks from Menzies Bay to Christchurch. Also known as a keen walker, Stoddart’s paintings of Cashmere Hills and Governors Bay picture the terrain these journeys might have traversed. 

 

Tāmaki Makaurau-based, Louise Menzies has a research-led practice that operates at the intersection between image and language—creating films, artist books, installations, and performative works. Her work often reflects on shared experiences, intangible encounters, and language in its myriad forms. Her recent exhibitions include Eight Thousand Layers, Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (2024), Vital Machinery, Hastings City Art Gallery (2023), In an Orange my mother was eating, Hocken Gallery, Dunedin (2019), and Gorgon Malkin Witch, Te Uru, Auckland (2017).