Jacqueline Fraser, The gorgeous artist is bowing you (with flair) "Greet sveltly those vile creeps surely. Speak briskly in the only way it was meant. Stretch low that strange voice loudly. Kick their pastel mediocrity" 2001; from the series A DEMURE PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST STRIP SEARCHED <<with 11 details of bi polar disorder>> (under close scrutiny); black ribbon, laminated tracing paper, wire, French brocade, black couture lasce and sequin organza; 220 x 180 cm
Rob Garrett
Previously published in Contemporary Art + Objects, 3rd April 2008, Art+Object 21st Century Auction House, Auckland, pp56-57.

There is a sharp tongue beneath that black couture lace! Watch out! Jacqueline Fraser has perfected what I would call chic critique. Not a critique of chic, but chic deployed as the questioning and critical voice. Remember those 1940s movies where all the dames are larger than life, smart as hell and twice as witty!? Like them this ‘gorgeous artist’ in her ‘demure portrait’ deploys the power of a sculptured coiffure, kitten heels, lusciously layered French brocade and fine posture to take a swipe at bad manners, poor taste and narrow thinking.

Jacqueline Fraser needs no introduction to New Zealand audiences, but as the artist prefers to shun the local limelight, it is worth reprising the distinctions that came her way during the period this key work was made and exhibited. In 2001, Fraser and Peter Robinson became the first artists to present exhibitions at the Venice Biennale within a New Zealand pavilion. Also in 2001, Fraser was selected for the Yokohama Triennial in Japan and for a major installation at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. 2003 saw the Venice Biennale installation brought back to New Zealand and reconfigured for an exhibition at City Gallery, Wellington; and in the same year the artist was featured at the Museo de Arte, Bogota, Columbia. In 2004 Fraser was short-listed for the inaugural and prestigious biennial Artes Mundi Prize and for the Walters Prize in Auckland.

Reading the title of this beautiful work I have to wonder who the ‘vile creeps’ are and what order of ‘mediocrity’ has strip-searched this demure artist that she should lambaste them so with her sequin organza and black ribbon? And why ‘strip searched’?

Firstly, being stripped is a nod in the direction of Marcel Duchamp (remember The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23); secondly a black reminder that entering the USA in post 9/11 days was a gruelling indignity for too many; and thirdly it hints at the impolite public scrutiny faced by our artists selected for Venice, as a consequence of the honour. If Fraser’s demure figures, with their beak-like faces and hands spread behind like wings, seem to be about to take flight, or fright, from something, perhaps it is from artlessness of any kind. For Fraser, as with other Venice artists, being selected resulted in being over-burdened with a ‘representative’ role and being dragged into a quagmire of political ambition, cultural bias and ignorance. In the Demure Portrait, Fraser diagnoses Venice as the arena in which our schizophrenic struggle with nationalist internationalism has been most painfully obvious. What is the antidote? Good manners, refined taste, cultured thinking and a demure privacy.