980mm x 1320mm, 1996-97.
Mark Braunias is cool. Here is what Ferner Galleries (where my mum used to work, yay mum!) has to say about him - sorry for the cut and paste:
Mark Braunias was born in Mt Maunganui, and after working as a shipping clerk and some time travelling Europe, he returned to New Zealand to study painting. He graduated from Ilam School of Fine Arts in 1987 and subsequently qualified as a teacher from Christchurch College of Education.
His art has been exhibited in several prestigious exhibitions notably A Very Peculiar Practice (City Gallery, Wellington, 1995), Gruesome (Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, 1998), The Cartoon Show (Auckland Art Gallery, 2001) First -Time Caller (Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2002) and My New Art God (Lopdell House, Titirangi 2004). He has also produced several limited edition artist books. In 2005 Braunias was the recipient of the William Hodges Fellowship.
His work can be found in major public and private collections of New Zealand including the Auckland Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery and Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the James Wallace Trust.
Braunias' work comments on nostalgic notions of New Zealand's national identity and has developed into an investigation of the social fabric on a more universal level.His early works explored not only how we perceive, but also the mechanisms through which we perceive. In his Emblems of Identity series (1988-1993), he observed New Zealand society and explored aspects of its national identity, using themes such as rugby (in particular the All Blacks), various well-known national identities, the traditional debutante presentation ceremony, and war brides. The characters he portrayed, while recognisable as being from our communities, were presented as generic identities.
More recently his imagery has been characterized by a biomorphic blend of figures and dialogue sampled from contemporary culture. The artist maps the nation's funny bone, incorporating language, vibrant colour and imagery to define a distinctive grass roots humour in the substrata of New Zealand culture. Radio talkback, pop idols, café culture and internet chat-rooms, early comics and cartoons, boxing magazines, record covers and music magazines are all referenced in his work.
Through a single-minded exploration of form and line, Braunias has developed an extensive repertoire of distinctive forms, some cartoon-like, some abstract, which he documents in journals at an almost infectious rate. The imagery in these journals are revisited and reworked, creating a finely tuned and highly fertile oeuvre.
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