Bryony Dalefield

Bryony Dalefield (born 1951) is a New Zealand photographer and visual artist based in Wales. Her photographs are held in the collections of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

Early life Dalefield was born in 1951 in Palmerston North, New Zealand, and grew up on a farm in the Manawatū region. In 1976, she travelled to the United Kingdom to work. During the 1990s she lived and worked in the village of Wye on the English-Welsh border.

Education Dalefield studied photography at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland.

Career After graduating from Elam, Dalefield worked as a photographer in New Zealand. Her photographs were featured in New Art: Some Recent New Zealand Sculpture and Post-Object Art, edited by Jim Allen and Wystan Curnow in 1976.

She began making quilts around 1979 after seeing an exhibition in the UK in which quilting was presented as an artistic medium. Her quilts have included motifs such as eyes, hands, scissors and trees, along with Māori-inspired designs. Regarding works presented in her solo exhibition Provided with Eyes, she said that her quilting has taken me to various countries and through stages in my life. I think they reflect that, to me they a story about a journey. [...] What I like is the size. Quilting is done on a larger scale and designed to be wrapped around the body. All my work is larger than me. She describes herself as a quilter "greedy for pattern". Provided with Eyes at Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, 1994. For this exhibition, Dalefield brought to New Zealand a collection of 33 quilts from an exhibition that had first shown at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, Wales. Cusp at Ruthin Craft Centre, Denbighshire, 2017. This group exhibition presented works from seven Welsh artists whose works mingle art and craft. Other artists included Claire Curneen, Paul Emmanuel, Nigel Hurlstone, Christine Mills, Beth Elen Roberts and Sean Vicary.

Written works:

Provided with Eyes (1994), a work written and designed to accompany the exhibition of quilts of the same name. .