Bronwynne Cornish

Bronwynne Cornish (born 1945) is a New Zealand ceramicist, sculptor and arts educator.

Early life

Cornish was born in Wellington in 1945. Her parents separated when she was three years old and with her father Cornish moved first to Napier and then to Taranaki where she attended Hawera Technical High School.

Career

Cornish enrolled to study industrial design at the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design.

Artworks and major exhibitions

One of Cornish's key early ceramic installations is Home is where the Heart is (1982).

In 1983 Cornish was selected to be part of a series of exhibitions at Auckland Art Gallery where artists were invited to choose a gallery space and make an exhibition or installation for it. The installation consisted of three major elements, centred on the form of a giant woman laid on the floor made from local basalt stone, accompanied by three urns filled with fresh flower arrangements and 52 clay masks of skulls, lit with coloured lights. The sculpture had been moved to Cornish's garden, with seasonally variable planting: when photographed for the book this included alyssum and baby's tears, but the authors noted Cornish was 'considering a winter planting of red cabbage and curly kale'.

In 1984, prompted by her interest in Neolithic artifacts, Cornish visited Silbury Hill and Avebury Henge in Wiltshire, and in 1988 she travelled to the megalithic mounds at Newgrange in Ireland to observe the winter solstice. In 1996 she was selected by New Zealand artist and curator Jim Viviaere as part of a group of artists to represent New Zealand at the second Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane.

Public collections

Cornish's work is held in many public collections, including the Auckland War Memorial Museum, The Dowse Art Museum, the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, The Wallace Collection, Auckland, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and the Kobayashi Collection, Tokyo.

Further information Gordon Brown, 'Exhibitions: Auckland', Art New Zealand, no. 17, Spring 1980 Alistair Paterson, 'Clay Poets:The Art of Denis O'Connor and Peter Hawkesby', Art New Zealand, no. 20, Winter 1981 Elizabeth Eastmond, 'Bronwynne Cornish's Dedicated to the Kindness of Mothers', Art New Zealand, no. 30, Autumn 1984 Virginia Were, 'Coming to terms with impermanence', Art News New Zealand, Autumn 2014 Bronwynne Cornish interviewed about Home Is Where The Heart Is 2015