ALISON JONES

The No. 8 Wire poses a batch of questions...
A creative person answers...


What cities/towns have you lived in (or spent more than a few months in), beginning with your place of birth.

Blenheim, Nelson, Christchurch, Wellington

What are the earliest stories you remember hearing?

The Story of Maui

What music was present and still memorable from your youth/adolescence?

Blue Monday by New Order, heard first on a late night radio in my fifth form year 1985.

For you as a creative person, who are three influential artists or thinkers?

Louise Bourgeois, Simone de Beavoir, Georgia O’Keffe

Who are your favourite or most admired figures from history?

Peggy Guggenheim, Andy Warhol, Camille Claudel

Name three films that you consider profound, moving, or extraordinary.

Wings of Desire, Lost in Translation, Sleeping Dogs

What was your first real job? second? third?

I started with New Zealand Rail on the 13th of March 1989 as a Train Conductor and later became the only woman Freight Train Examiner in the Wellington Goods Yard and left TranzRail January 2001. During that time with Rail I pursued my artistic practise and continue to do so as a postie.

If you had to eat the same meal every day, what would it be?

Laotian Country Chicken Stew, a one dish Laos meal where the chicken is boiled in a pot with vegetables and also forms a stock. That way one has a dish of chicken/veggies and a tasty broth.

Name a few books that you couldn't put down, would read again, haunt you still.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s - Fellowship of the Ring, The Return of the King, The Two Towers.

What have you done, seen, experienced, or produced that was a disappointment to you?

The Wellington City Gallery has hosted many dynamic and exciting exhibitions, but the promotion and marketing of the 1999 Keith Haring Retrospective exhibition was disrespectful and terrible in comparison to the treatment of an earlier exhibition by another equally as renowned New York artist, Robert Mapplethorpe in 1995. Interviewers would barrage people at the Wellington Railway Station and thrust an artwork at their faces and ask their opinion on Keith Harring’s work for television adds alongside tasteless billboards.

In one sentence, can you define art?

Art to the artist is a compulsion and habit akin to drug addiction but mostly has an end product.

What word of advice would you offer an aspiring artist in your field?

Go to a 'recognised' art school; Ilam, Elam, AUT, Unitech, Otago and Wanganui Art schools and try to get picked up by a dealer or get into as many shows as you can, ride the wave of emerging artists from art schools and get a masters if you can still hack the academic environment. Otherwise being an 'untrained or outsider' artist is a much longer and harder route to transverse the arts pyramid of exhibitions, recognition, dealers and awards. I myself am a Ilam art school dropout.

Where would you like to live, but have yet to?

If I ever tire of Wellington it would be San Francisco that I first visited in 1993.

What would you like to do, but have yet to?

Get funding from Creative NZ for my own photography work and exhibition.

Briefly describe a project you are planning for the future.

I'm currently working on a joint photography project that references an old television show.

What one question would you add to this Query?

How do you get anything finished when you have kids?


BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

In 2005, the year of the Rooster finds me busy with my dirty secret painting (I call it dirty because its big and unfashionable in today’s painting market) and working on a video piece. I keep up with contemporary art developments, critiques and visit exhibitions in Auckland, New Plymouth and from time to time write art reviews for the Capital Times in Wellington. My other interests are gardening and wearing bright clothes.