Chantal Fraser is a Brisbane-based artist of Samoan heritage. Her art practice integrates the cultural knowledge of Pacific traditional technologies of decoration and construction experienced through her living space. As a New-Zealand born artist who has grown up in Australia, she has constantly lived within a merged Pacific/Western influenced sub-culture. Fraser’s work is improvised through aesthetic emotion and intuition illustrating a tactile relationship with the material emphasizing continual significance of the familial and the impact of the banal experience within the home. Her practice borrows from the personal experience and highlights its journey into the re-contextual. Her work “is evidence that the tiniest incidentals of Pacific culture may bear the potential for endless inventiveness” (Hoffie, Pat, 2005, QPACifika catalogue essay).
Fraser has worked on arts projects with contemporary art and design practitioners as well as sustaining a professional exhibition practice. She has facilitated arts projects with the youth Samoan community, specifically in the outer northern suburbs of Brisbane as part of an arts initiative for Pacific Islanders. Her recent projects and exhibitions include the theming and design of the 2006 Pasifika festival at Brisbane Powerhouse, Site Pacific - Brisbane Powerhouse, Feast to Feast - College Gallery QCA, Taulima Series - University Art Museum UQ and The Assembly – The Window at QPAC. Fraser was a conference speaker on behalf of QPACifika at this year’s Australian Association for the Advancement in Pacific Studies conference held at QUT, Carseldine and The Pacific Edge, held in Mackay. Most recently she has been involved as a designer for performing arts productions for QPAC’s Out of the Box festival and together with Polytoxic for Contact Inc.’s Third Place production Da Hope Tour. |
