Emily Hartley-Skudder

Emily Hartley-Skudder (born 1988, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland) is a contemporary artist living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.

Emily is known for her paintings, assemblages and site-specific installations which delve into the artificial ordinary and faux domestic – think life-sized dollhouses, carpeted bathrooms, and discoloured, fake fruit. 

Her process begins with the somewhat obsessive collecting of found objects and materials: the search for miniatures, toys and plastic receptacles has expanded into bathroom ceramics and snake-oil hygiene tools. Emily responds to these objects, creating sculptural assemblages that can exist in their three-dimensional form or are photographed and translated into detailed oil paintings. When exhibited, these works often find a home in the showroom-esque installations she constructs.

Questioning notions of gendered, public and private space, Emily recreates and manipulates the commonplace – turning it into something peculiar, unsettling and yet strangely familiar. She is interested in our relationship with ordinary objects and environments, and what they reveal about us and the expectations we place on our bodies. Her use of retro and distinctly dated homewares speak to perceptions of taste and class, while highlighting home-decoration as a historically appropriate space for women to express their creativity, just like the still life genre. 

Alongside inescapable art historical references, Emily mixes ingredients of humour, feminism, desire and bathroomware, perhaps offering a playful subversion of a historically male-dominated art world.