Joanna Margaret Paul (1955–2003) was a New Zealand artist who pioneered interdisciplinary practice, working prolifically across the mediums of film, poetry and painting. Often shot and edited in-camera, her film work chronicled motherhood and domestic life (Task, Napkins), the worn traces of urban settlement (Port Chalmers Cycle) and the persistent presence of the natural world. Other works such as Sisterhood portrayed the life of other female artists identified with the 1970s womens movement in New Zealand.
Curated by Peter Todd, Through a Different Lens/Film Work by Joanna Margaret Paul is the first collection of Joanna Margaret Paul’s moving image work to make Paul’s work available to an international audience. In Todd’s accompanying essay he places her work in the lineage of film-makers Margaret Tait and Robert Bresson, and painter Frances Hodgkins.
Through a Different Lens/Film Work by Joanna Margaret Paul contains 13 works shot in the 1970s that have been transferred from 8mm and 16mm film to high definition video.
Curator Peter Todd is a film-maker and curator based in London. He was co-editor of Subjects & Sequences: A Margaret Tait Reader (LUX, 2004), which gathered together new essays on Orcadian film-poet Margaret Tait's work, interviews, reprints of key poems, a story and texts as well as a detailed filmography, a chronology, a bibliography, and resources. Peter Todd currently works for the British Film Institute.
Works
Napkins (1975)
Jillian Dressing (1976)
Task (1982)
Sisterhood (1975)
Seacliff (1975)
Body/House (1975)
Motorway (1971)
Barrys Bay 2 (1975)
Children Imogen (1975)
Aberhart’s House (1976)
Port Chalmers Cycle (1972)
Thorndon (1975)
Napkins (1975)
