'Florence Weir in a Garden, Ōtautahi Christchurch' (2024) was part of the exhibition Modern Women The Flight of Time at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2024-2025).

Who is Florence Weir?

Holderness’ exploration and invocation of Florence Weir – Holderness’s alter ego, a nom de plume for the Christchurch-based artist – is more than just an alias. Florence Weir is a symbol: a symbol of women in the art historical and design canon.

“Combining fictional elements with art historical investigation, this project oscillates between representation and production of the past” says Holderness

Lucinda Bennett discusses the artworks in the exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2024, in The Spinoff:

“Before you enter the exhibition proper, there is this: a frame, two photographs, both mottled with black dots. One image shows a young woman posed in a living room, her face blurred by overexposure. The other depicts a lush, overgrown garden, with a woman crouched and barely discernible amidst the flurry of branches and dots. These are the only photographs of Florence Weir, the only New Zealand artist to attend the Bauhaus art school. And yet, the wall label tells us they were taken this year. How is this possible?

The answer lies with the photographer, contemporary artist Julia Holderness, who has invented Weir – her artworks and her history – as a “device to facilitate connections that go beyond recorded histories and fill gaps.” Holderness invites audiences to consider the construction of identity, artistic or otherwise, and the elusiveness of women artists in a canon compiled primarily by men. Slippery and smart, Holderness’s photographs are an intriguing entrée to an exhibition that challenges the homogeneity of how we tend to show the past .”

Julia Holderness lives and works in Ōtautahi Christchurch. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury in 2002 and an Honours in Visual Arts at AUT University, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in 2015. In 2022 Holderness completed a Visual Arts PhD in practice-led research at AUT University. Her thesis titled “Ever Present Archiving: methodologies for art histories through invention, fabrication and social practice” explores archives and their construction of art-historical narratives.