Margaret Feeney

I am a practicing artist and work from my studio at Port Waikato, Aotearoa. I’m currently working towards a show at artist run gallery Rice Pudding in Wellington for next year. The show is based on the work of my residency at The Arquetopia Foundation in Puebla, Mexico, earlier this year.

I also work at outsider art studio Māpura Studios in Auckland where I currently run an art space in Māngere with performance artist Kalisolaite ‘Uhila and artist/designer Sonny Tuiletufuga. We are collaborating with the community and Te Ara-rata Stream Team to decorate the new IAmMāngere Eco Hub. I am an experienced tutor and have taught at universities, polytechnics, community and private art schools, and coordinated and tutored dedicated art programmes at Auckland Prison, Paremoremo, and Korowai Manaaki. I also run Collective Invention Workshops and run an online art programme.

Sharing ideas with people through art is exciting and illuminating. My area of special interest is creative process: the generation, testing, and development of artists’ ideas. I love designing session plans to open materials, processes, concepts, and methodologies up to people, and the collective adventure of exploring them together. The core kaupapa of my teaching practice is invention and inclusion.

I use a broad range of media and move across 2D and 3D in my own art practice and in my teaching practice. I draw and paint with oils, watercolour, ink, and acrylic. I teach observational drawing (the still life, landscape, and life drawing) and painting as well as conceptual expression. I make objects out of cardboard, clay, plaster resin, timber, sticks and found objects. I use modelling and assemblage and am currently learning how to carve. I’m a big fan of collage and rudimentary printing, and make rudimentary stop motion films. I make interactive public sculpture and collaborate with different outsider groups to make public installations together.