Dr. Kate Coolahan
Artist Statement
Coolahan's art is centrally concerned with questions of identity. A continuing preoccupation is with the ways in which status, territory and environment are perceived and owned by the societies that inhabit the South Pacific. Many of her works have explicitly tackled the systems of control, oppression and alienation that structure women's identity and roles in settler societies like Australia and New Zealand (and, in a wider sense, around the world, as gender formations have been increasingly scrutinized). In order to give primacy to themes and issues, Coolahan has refused to pursue a single-media approach, allowing shifts in materials, processes and technology, and the values these embody, to play a key role in her exploration of society. Coolahan suggests that her work is characterized by “eclecticism,” which “is not about not being able to make up your mind, it's about acknowledging different needs and finding a way for them to co-exist.” Furthermore she said, "I would like to be remembered for portraying certain sorts of sensibility that were real during my lifetime, and it is only the creative area that can communicate that. What I can give people can only be what I am, where I am, at the time that I am. My work won't touch a lot of people but it may touch others in a similar situation at a later date."
Information excerpted from Things that have a long way to go: a biography of Kate Coolahan by Damian Skinner in Art New Zealand, Issue 104.
Design School Stalwart Honoured
The conferment of an Honorary Doctor of Literature on Wellington artist Kate Coolahan is an acknowledgment of her "very significant" contribution to New Zealand’s cultural identity, says Pro Vice-Chancellor Dr. Duncan Joiner.
In his conferment speech at the College of Design, Fine Arts and Music graduation ceremony last week, Dr. Joiner made particular reference to Dr. Coolahan’s various roles in the School of Design since 1962, when it was under the Wellington Polytechnic umbrella.
"She brought to those roles her insights, passion and determination to ensure that the design curriculum maintained an international standing," he said.
"Many of the current courses now being taught at the School of Design still bear the hallmarks created by Kate Coolahan some 40 years ago. Through her work at the School of Design - and her teaching of drawing in particular - she has influenced most of New Zealand’s now-prominent designers, and indeed some of the world’s prominent designers."
Dr. Coolahan was born, trained and raised in Sydney, where she worked as an illustrator. The first painting she sold was hung in the Australian Embassy in Washington. In 1952 she moved to Wellington, where she had been offered a advertising designer’s position with Inglis Wright. She later moved to Carlton Carruthers du Chateau and King.
"For the next ten years, her sophisticated illustration and advertising campaigns advanced the standard of advertising work in New Zealand."
Dr. Coolahan’s profile as a significant modernist New Zealand artist began to emerge after her arrival at the School of Design.
"But it is not as a painter that Kate Coolahan is best known. Rather, her career development has been closely tied to the emergence of printmaking as an art form. Indeed, through her teaching of printmaking at the School of Design, she has influenced many of our best-known graphic designers and illustrators."
Dr. Joiner also referred to Dr. Coolahan’s multiple roles in art and design administration, and her generous contributions of time and energy in the development of art and design organisations.
Her internationally-recognised art can be found in major state and private collections in New Zealand, Australia, United States, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Chile. She has exhibited regularly at international Biennales, including those at Venice, Buenos Aires, Cracow and Tokyo.
"The list of national and international awards and successes continues to grow, and her influence as a design educator continues to reverberate around the world in the successes of Massey University design graduates."
From Massey News as published on the Massey University website.