“I love how my artworks grow and evolve with every mark made or action taken so that in the end, just like a knitted jumper, the whole becomes more than the sum of its parts.”
Zoë Nash is a diverse visual artist working across a range of creative disciplines. Her works are a colourful, playful, and celebratory exploration of mark making, pattern, process, repetition and accumulation. The works are vibrant, joyful and life-affirming. They dance between spaces, between foreground and background, revelation and concealment, then and now.
Zoë also has a strong interest in autobiography, memory and nostalgia. She is fascinated by how the sharing of stories can help us not only to make connections with others, but also gain a better understanding of our sense of self. Her works are often inspired by things seen and words spoken. Personal experiences are explored as a means of reaching out to others, hoping that they too will see in the work something that evokes a memory or tugs at the heart… a conversation that can be shared, a connection made.
With a love of nature and outdoor spaces, Zoë’s works increasingly draws on selected plant specimens and specific places as starting points. Colour is used both emotively and as a means to disrupt spatial depth. Conscious mark making is part of the intuitive process of addition, analysis, cross referencing, constant editing and refining. Works begin with no clear outcome but a firm underlying intention that drives each piece towards its ultimate conclusion.
Art Biography
Recent shows include; System and Circumstance with Linda Roche at the Browne School of Art Gallery, November 2019, Trashed As group exhibition at Corbans Estate Arts Centre, June 2019, and Slowly and Carefully, a solo show at Grey Gallery, June 2018.
Zoë is also a strong supporter of and regular contributor to community art events and initiatives. She has been creating large scale, site-specific installations at the Kaipara Coast Sculpture Gardens since 2015, and was an active participant in the Harbourview Sculpture Trails. She has participated in multiple Auckland Art Week exhibitions, and has created two major permanent public artworks for Auckland Council.
In 2022, 2020 and 2012 Zoë was a Finalist in the Walker & Hall Waiheke Art Awards, receiving the Zinni Douglas Merit Award in 2012. In 2019 she was one of six selected artists to take part in the Trashed As artist residency programme at the Waitakere Transfer Station. Other finalist nominations include: Parkin Drawing Prize 2015, Small Sculpture Prize Waiheke Community Art Gallery 2013, Trust Waikato Contemporary Art Awards 2004, and recipient of the Whitecliffe Post Grad Scholarship 2003.
Zoë has a Master of Fine Arts degree (Whitecliffe, 2002), a Bachelor of Arts degree (Auckland University, 1991. Zoë currently works from her west Auckland studio and teaches at Browne School of Art.