Fran Marno lives and works in Auckland. She lectured in the Painting Department at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University. She has a Doctorate of Fine Arts and has had several awards including a Masters Honours Award, a Doctoral Scholarship Award and most importantly a NZ Federation of Graduate Women's Post Doctoral Research Fellowship Award that enabled her to produce a series of painted portraits of older lesbians. She is currently a resident artist at Unitec and in 2010 was jointly awarded a research grant to facilitate the production of an exhibition foregrounding women's craft and the lesbian quotidian.
Her marginal positioning in the art world, both as woman and lesbian (a double marginalization) has been important in her role as lecturer and mentor at the various institutions she has worked in.
She has had solo exhibitions in Auckland, Wellington, England, Ireland and America.
Fran positions her paintings within the discourses of 'otherness' to enable the exploration of visual spaces normally invisible and silenced within the wider heteronormative culture. Whether they're belly buttons, lips, faces, aging hands or excitable duvets she negotiates ways for lesbians to have control over their self-representation. Her works constantly bring up questions about who we are and how we see ourselves. She's interested in how we move beyond straight culture's stereotypes and explore our own lives in our own way.
Click on the images with a purple border to see larger versions.
Email mcleod.marno.slingshot.co.nz. Website at www.franmarno.co.nz.
