Fiona Clark

Ko wai koe?
Ko Fiona Mary Clark, Ko Pakeha a’au.
German, Scottish, Irish & English descent.

Where are you living/working right now?
I live at Tikorangi, ‘Gas Lands’, North Taranaki. I have lived on the same property for 50 years, after leaving Elam art school, Auckland University in 1975. The property is the ex Tikorangi dairy factory, surrounded by farmland owned by a corporate family Trust that contracts farm workers to milk & manage 1300 cows. I also have fossil fuel company neighbours, who have fracked the ground beneath the property.

What do you do and why do you do it?
I like thinking, making, doing and being part of a wider community. Living a simple & healthy lifestyle.

What are you working on at the moment?
I have several projects.

Keeping my files and archives in order & seriously pitching someone to work with me on this.
And
Re looking at my REPOhistory project from 2011, in response to the visual ’gentrification’ of Waitara by repainting over a mural about the Steven Wallace killing in the main street, McLean Street in April 2000.
And
Responding to Darcy Lange’s 1988 film Lack of Hope, for an exhibition at the Govett Brewster in 2026 - If Darcy was here now, what would I tell him?
And
To keep working at the Waitara Project Community shop.

What do you love about art?
It is an acceptable addiction.

What are you reading/listening to/watching at the moment?
MATTERS OF STATE THE STEVEN WALLACE STORY. By G E Minchin. 2025. The book is a facsimile of the petition to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The petition claims that the N Z state failed to provide such a remedy for the unlawful killing of Steven Wallace by state actions and/or omissions in Waitara 30 April 2000.

Who is your art crush?
Louise Joséphine Bourgeois and Yayoi Kusama.

If you had one wish for the art world what would it be?
That the art world & artists divest and cease all fossil fuel company sponsorship & undertake due diligence in funding processes.