Joanna Braithwaite
Joanna Braithwaite was born in Halifax, England in 1962, and shortly after immigrated to New Zealand with her family. She graduated from the Ilam School of Fine Arts at Canterbury University in 1985, and has lived and worked in Sydney since 1999, receiving an MFA in 2000 from the College of Fine Arts Sydney.
Since the mid-1990s she has exhibited regularly in New Zealand and Australia, and in 2005 a survey show of her work entitled Wonderland was shown at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu. In the catalogue accompanying this exhibition curator Felicity Milburn explained, “Joanna Braithwaite’s paintings are ‘truer’ than many. Picking out our delusions, revealing our realities as frauds, teasing out the little truths moment by moment…” Braithwaite herself states, “I’d like my paintings to be a comtemplation that brings a viewer closer to an awareness of their own personal state.”
Braithwaite is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently the 2019 Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize. She has also been a finalist in the Archibald and Sulman Art Awards in Australia and was runner-up in the Portia Geach Art Award in 2006. In 2005 the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu, exhibited a survey show of her work entitled ‘Wonderland’. Her work is held in many private and public collections such as, Artbank and Germanos Collection in Sydney, Tweed River Art Gallery and Dubbo Regional Art Gallery in NSW, Christchurch Art Gallery, and James Wallace Collection in Auckland.
Exhibitions:
2019 – Warbler
2024 – Call of Nature