Prismatic Petrie - Issue 1

Written by Phillipa Wintle

Popular culture has tended to stereotype Gothicism as a depressive and somewhat morbid movement. Fern Petrie, a gothic artist who has exhibited her extraordinary and diverse works at the Depot Artspace, contextualises this perception by contending that the negative emotions we associate with Gothicism are used as a vessel to explore the emotional complexity of human existence on a deeper level. Petrie is a Gothic, Lebanese, Maori New Zealander. Through a fashioned repetition of recognisable Maori motif and docile, gothic portraiture she manages to challenge her ethnic and social stereotypes.

Just as her gothic identity challenges stereotypes within Maori and Lebanese culture, Petrie’s Maori stylizations possess an energy and musicality that challenge the concentrated manner in which they were executed. Her figurative works convey a stoic detachment from reality and are set within an exaggerated landscape, documenting Petrie’s attraction to fantasy. These themes are exemplified in her eclectic body of work, ranging from Indian ink drawings to three dimensional dollhouse vignettes. A two-foot skeleton rests in a glass box in the corner of the room. Decorative faces wrap themselves around the gilded framework of the skeletal system and distort in the concave of the pelvis. It is in this piece where Petrie’s fascination with mourning manifests.

The Victorian period of the 19th century is of notable significance for Petrie and it is from this period that images like these evolve. “My work is influenced by the culture of mourning, colonisation and the science that developed through the Victorian era. It looks back on established understanding and social repression discussing issues that affect the individual in gothic culture today.”

I was astonished by the sheer complexity of Petrie’s Koru images. A bamboo and indian ink technique, first used by Stanley Palmer, manifests itself in a representation of Maori motif, intricate and labyrinthine. At first glance I assumed these images to be prints, due to the intricacy of their nature and it was not until further examination hat I realised these images were the result of an intensive and dedicated design process, involving painstaking hours upon hours of ink application. It appears complicated; Fern Petrie, the Gothic, Maori, Lebanese, English New Zealander exploring her social and cultural identity in the 21st Century, through
reference to a period two centuries prior.

Perhaps, therefore creative expression provides Petrie with an identity and framework in which these complex issues can be explored, managed and expressed. Petrie reserves the right not to be stereotyped. Judging by both the uniqueness of her work and indeed her persona, it is a right for which I am happy to oblige.