Page 108 - Constructing Craft

shown in white male galleries. Without this official seal of approval … it continues to
41
be regarded as women’s work.’

Juliet Batten

Juliet Batten was born in Taranaki and attended high school and university in

Auckland, graduating with a PhD in English in 1968. Through the 1970s she
developed her skills as an artist and in 1982 she attended a course on Women’s Art

at Berkeley University in California taught by the feminist art historian Sherry
Buckburrough. On her return to New Zealand she began to use a medium that

brought her attention in craft circles. At the time she was described by one writer as
42
‘one of the leading artists in the New Zealand Women’s Art Movement’. However,
this unsurprising statement was followed by a codicil: ‘What is unusual about her
43
work and new for Juliet Batten, is that her preferred medium is fabric.’ The
qualification is less surprising than might be expected because the article on Batten

was in a magazine on craft. Batten was ‘surprised but thrilled’ that craftspeople may
have found her work interesting but, according to the author, Philip Clarke, she was

44
not a craftsperson but a ‘political artist.’ Statements such as this suggest that in
the minds of some there existed a clear distinction between art and craft and the
publishing of an article on an artist in a craft magazine was an attempt to move craft

from its traditional location into the art world.

Constructing Craft