Since beginning her artistic career as a printmaker in 1976 Carole Shepheard has worked across a variety of media, constantly exploring and developing her art practice while also maintaining a strong advocacy for the place of printmaking in the canon of art disciplines. 2006 saw her take early retirement from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts where she was Professor of Fine Art and re-locate, with musician husband John, to Kawhia. The drivers for the change were a health issue and a desire to take back ownership of her studio practice, but also to work more at a community level.
To this end she set up Te Puti Art Studio for teaching and community art activities and her own studio space. Working on her doctorate from 2002 (Lieux de Mémoire: the object, the artist and the museum) and the setting up of the Museum of Cultural Anxiety project in downtown Auckland, had seen her concentrate on object-based art for a time but the move to Kawhia also saw her return to printmaking and painting.
Artist Statement
About Carole’s ‘I Am Not’ series:
“The Rorschach inkblot test from the 60’s was widely used by psychoanalysts to assess cognition, personality and as a way to diagnose certain mental conditions. It was soon invalidated however new researchers have reclaimed aspects in order to derive indexes or predictions of future behaviour. It’s a dangerous trajectory.”