The Making of Wall Street 2015

Jacqueline Fraser has exhibited widely through Europe, the United States and Australasia in a career that spans more than three decades. An acclaimed figure on the international stage, she represented New Zealand in their inaugural presentation at the Venice Biennale in 2001, and in the same year presented a solo exhibition at the New Museum in New York. This was followed by a solo show at Kunsthalle Wien in 2005. Fraser is currently exhibiting in a group exhibition at the Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art (Turkey) and has previously been selected for major international group shows at the New Museum (2011) and Yokohama Triennale (2001).

Fraser’s three-dimensional practice artfully employs the images and materiality of popular, consumer culture, to create specific environments wherein typically dissociated fields are comingled. Symbols of brash luxury are tacked together with cheap domestic materials in her embellished collages, her immersive installations exploiting the tropes of fashion and décor to undermine traditional hierarchies between art and design.

The Making of Wall Street 2015 is Fraser’s eighth solo exhibition with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. A fictional and fantastical remake of the film Wall Street (1987), the installation is composed of images from Italian Vogue, Zoo Magazine, Artforum, gardening books and other pulp media. Eschewing direct visual references to the original film, the installation creates a similar atmosphere of greed and excess, set against the background of money, art and New York. Black and yellow painted walls are framed by a few tinsel curtains, while party chandeliers and balloons droop as Wall Street takes a hit. The collages are rough and licentious, echoing its subject.

Fraser describes the particular inspiration behind her latest body of work, as follows:

'I’ve lived in New York so the work touches on a subject I love. I find the close connection of art and money fascinating, as well as the supposed good taste that it implies.

The starting point for this piece was the economic downturn. I found myself stuck at home watching endless movies, MTV and searching the internet, when previously I was always on a plane travelling to art fairs or living in New York and Paris.

There’s no art where I live. I made my only connection to art the subject of this work, using ASAP Rocky, Andy Warhol, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, Tracey Emin, Frederico Fellini, Paul McCarthy etc. as my subjects…'

(Jacqueline Fraser, 2015)