Opening - Thursday 27th August - 5.30-7pm
Julia Holderness presents her solo exhibition, Botanical Correspondents, developed for Rokowhiria Ashburton Art Gallery and exhibited earlier in 2026, at the National and as part of her Zonta Ashburton Women’s Art Awards 2025, Premier Award.
In Botanical Correspondents, Holderness' research considers and responds to the work of Emily Harris, one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s first professional woman artists. Emily Cumming Harris (1837-1925) is best-known for painting the indigenous flora of Aotearoa, producing hundreds of artworks in her studio in Whakatū Nelson. One hundred years after her death, her remarkable paintings continue to captivate audiences and invite them to contemplate the beauty of the natural world. In this exhibition Holderness responds creatively to her life, work and artistic practices.
The central component of the exhibition – a trio of installations – traces Holderness’ working and the passage of time across the project – gathering, layering, and reconfiguring fragments of Emily’s imagery alongside her own. Bush, Studio and Exhibitions act as a response and continuation: tracing a dialogue with Emily’s botanical world and the multiplicity she employed in depicting plants and nature.
This exhibition was developed with support from Rokowhiria Ashburton Art Gallery.
Julia Holderness lives and works in Ōtautahi Christchurch. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury (2002) and an Honours in Visual Arts at AUT University, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (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.
Julia Holderness was awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Doctoral Scholarship and won the Glaister Ennor Graduate Art Award in 2016. Other projects include her PhD exhibition Schemes for Vibrant Living at Te Wai Ngutu Kākā Gallery, AUT, The Studio, which was developed for Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2021, Florence & Florence: Other Textile Histories presented at Ilam Campus Gallery in 2018 and Gallery 91 for SCAPE Public Art in 2017.
In 2024 Julia Holderness was included in the exhibition Modern Women: Flight of Time at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Curated by Julia Waite this landmark exhibition highlighted the leading role women artists have played in shaping the development of modern art in Aotearoa New Zealand.
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