Overview
Wright’s paintings are a reflection of her world view, her coiling brush marks echoing the ‘rhythmic, cyclical nature’ she identifies as universal forms in the natural world. Wright marries alluring, harmonious colour with visceral imagery to elevate the feminine to monumental standing. Using scale to her advantage, her paintings engulf the viewer, exuding traditionally masculine virtues of power and strength.

b. 1992, NZ
Lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand

Grace Wright’s atmospheric paintings are all-consuming, inviting the viewer into a baroque world of tangled gestures. Markings on the canvas twist and convulse about themselves to build an anarchic structure before unravelling to moments of repose. While Wright’s gestures may be abstract, she views her paintings as representational narratives, evoking the tempestuous rhythm of the natural world, while alluding to 17th-century religious paintings.

Wright’s paintings are a reflection of her world view, her coiling brush marks echoing the ‘rhythmic, cyclical nature’ she identifies as universal forms in the natural world. Wright marries alluring, harmonious colour with visceral imagery to elevate the feminine to monumental standing. Using scale to her advantage, her paintings engulf the viewer, exuding traditionally masculine virtues of power and strength. ‘As a female body’, Wright muses, ‘I would enter a ‘transcendent’, ‘no mind’ state allowing the painting to come through me’. Gestures might then be read as an extension of her body, with their pulsating rhythm; a key methodology of Wright’s practice.

"I’m interested in the slippage between what we think we know and the felt state of the body, asking how painting might act as a stimulus to transcend the everyday experience of living. To me, these works enact a kind of ‘opening’ and through this a felt exaltation or agony by tight coiling gestures that hold a tension and release. A frozen moment of ecstasy perhaps, equally delicious as it is grotesque. The significance of the large scale allows us to become aware of the relative size of our bodies before it. In both scale and style, abstraction is ‘an ideal vehicle for something as enigmatic and subjective as the spiritual." Grace Wright, 2021

Wright graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2019 and exhibits regularly across New Zealand and Australia, with recent exhibitions in Asia. 

Gow Langford Gallery has represented Grace Wright since 2020.

Works
  • Grace Wright, Circumnavigation of the Ocean, 2025
    Circumnavigation of the Ocean, 2025
  • Grace Wright, Cosmography, 2025
    Cosmography, 2025
  • Grace Wright, Geometrical Reality, 2025
    Geometrical Reality, 2025
  • Grace Wright, Great Cosmology, 2025
    Great Cosmology, 2025
  • Grace Wright, On the Beauty of Song, 2025
    On the Beauty of Song, 2025
  • Grace Wright, On the Disposition which Characterizes the Wise, 2025
    On the Disposition which Characterizes the Wise, 2025
  • Grace Wright, On the Planets, 2025
    On the Planets, 2025
  • Grace Wright, Projections, 2025
    Projections, 2025
  • Grace Wright, The Causes of Atmospheric Phenomena, 2025
    The Causes of Atmospheric Phenomena, 2025
  • Grace Wright, The Causes of Seeds, Plants and Fruits, 2025
    The Causes of Seeds, Plants and Fruits, 2025
  • Grace Wright, The Truth Is In The Depths, 2025
    The Truth Is In The Depths, 2025
  • Grace Wright, Breath of Life 1, 2024
    Breath of Life 1, 2024
  • Grace Wright, Cradle In The Moment, 2024
    Cradle In The Moment, 2024
  • Grace Wright, Le Temps et La Lumière, 2024
    Le Temps et La Lumière, 2024
  • Grace Wright, Supersymmetric Breath, 2024
    Supersymmetric Breath, 2024
  • Grace Wright, Nothing Is Ever Truly Lost, 2023
    Nothing Is Ever Truly Lost, 2023
  • Grace Wright, Sweetness and Life, 2023
    Sweetness and Life, 2023
  • Grace Wright, Thread Of A Distant Universe, 2023
    Thread Of A Distant Universe, 2023
  • Grace Wright, Time Will Tell, 2023
    Time Will Tell, 2023
  • Grace Wright, A Gaze To Be Held Forever, 2022
    A Gaze To Be Held Forever, 2022
  • Grace Wright, Knowing the Sky like a Star, 2022
    Knowing the Sky like a Star, 2022
  • Grace Wright, Making A Case For Reality, 2022
    Making A Case For Reality, 2022
  • Grace Wright, The Glow Of Giving, 2022
    The Glow Of Giving, 2022
  • Grace Wright, Finding New Ways of Belonging, 2021
    Finding New Ways of Belonging, 2021
  • Grace Wright, Mistaking Heaven For Earth, 2021
    Mistaking Heaven For Earth, 2021
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