in conversation with Anne Kirker
Pat Hoffie's art touches on multiple concerns including the role of women in the arts, popular culture vis-à-vis the so called high arts and the impact of technology on traditional art and craft forms. In 1991 Pat spoke with Anne Kirker about her current practice, which involves both painting and electronically generated imagery, and about her blurring of the boundaries of these usually mutually exclusive areas.
Anne Kirker: Pat, I am principally interested in discussing the role of electronic media in your art practice. Although you continue to paint, both photocopy, and more recently, computer-generated imagery have become prominent features of your work. Why is this?
Pat Hoffie: Because I've been a painter, and therefore working in a field which is problematic for women, it has made me aware of the need to go outside that field at times and come back in again. Traditionally, there have been territories of art practice which virtually excluded my gender. I am also interested in the dichotomy between the hand-made and the machine-made and in anything that seems to be mutually exclusive. The computer printouts that you get from the Amiga, for example, resemble needlework. The pixels end up looking like petitpoint—women's art. There is territory to be explored between the similarities of these things rather than the obvious differences.
Anne Kirker: With Gender/Nature/Culture, a series of colour photocopies you showed at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia in 1989, you used Canon equipment to build up pigment and distort the values of the original.
Pat Hoffie: Yes, I used the machine itself to do the drawing and painting, although I started off with basic collage. I was focussing on the points... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline