The artistry of public bathrooms _{by Alessia Belsito-Riera}

Art permeates all aspects of life for creative Wellingtonian Emily Hartley-Skudder. “It’s my practice, my career, most of my friends are in the arts community as well. I have a lot of art in my house. I frame my life around seeing art,” she says.

After focusing on the subject in high school and letting “everything else fall by the wayside”, she enrolled at Ilam School of Fine Arts in Canterbury, where she studied for five years. In postgrad, she dove into any opportunity that presented itself, juggling side jobs and show deadlines to keep the momentum going.

Now she has shows and residencies aplenty populating her résumé, recently adding the $40,000 Fair Trust Art Prize to her list of achievements. Funded by the Estate of Dr Eileen Fair and delivered in partnership with Palmerston North’s Te Manawa Museum, the residency aims to bring top artists to Manawatū.

Hartley-Skudder, with her vibrant oil paintings and immersive installations where everyday objects, gendered spaces, and nostalgia collide, could not be more grateful to be the inaugural recipient.

What was your reaction when you heard that you’d been chosen for the inaugural prize? 


It was affirming and nice to know that people have been watching what I’ve been doing and believe in me as an artist. It’s a great opportunity to be able to continue with the momentum that I have had from previous residencies. It can be quite hard at times as an artist; you apply for a lot of things, so when I found out, I’d actually applied for about five and didn’t get any of them. It was a great feeling to receive that recognition.

How would you describe your practice?

I have a grounding in painting. I am very interested in the everyday and the domestic, but also the artificial versions of those things that we surround ourselves with. I really enjoyed collecting found objects and revisiting some of the dollhouses and miniatures I had as a child. Then it expanded to collecting all sorts of kitchen paraphernalia, then bathrooms. I make installations and then I integrate my paintings into those installations. My process normally goes: finding things, arranging them, photographing them, and then working from those sourced images to make paintings. It’s something that really excites me. There are so many things within painting that you can do, but I find it helpful to respond to existing things and objects in environments from the everyday world. It gives me something to bounce off.

What about painting keeps it the focus in your practice?

It’s become my craft. It’s the thing that I am skilled at and spent many, many years perfecting. I always like to have it as an anchor. That can be quite nice when I’m also doing a lot of organising and logistics and stuff, which is exciting and necessary for larger installations. Working out how you’re going to get bathtubs across the country is a bit less rewarding and abstract than physical painting time. I do really enjoy having that absorptive time where you can just focus on the one thing. It can be quite helpful to slow down and focus on something with everything else going around you. Even though it can be a real struggle and frustrating, I do get that satisfaction from it. It’s a feeling you’re chasing, when things are finally going well and a series of paintings are coming together. I feel truly more like an artist in that moment.

What have been some career highlights?

There’s been quite a few. I went on a residency in Xiamen, China in 2018 through Wellington City Council and the Asia New Zealand Foundation. That was my first residency, and it was so eye-opening – just the colours and materials – and opened up more possibilities in my work. There was also a shift in my work being more overtly feminist, like, putting breast pumps and speculums in it and playfully pushing that side of things. I was also the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship recipient in 2023. The exhibition for that was a really special opportunity where I was able to play the role of curator. I searched through historic and contemporary works and public collections around Aotearoa and brought them into the exhibition alongside my work. It was looking at feminine figures bathing, like the la toilette genre, which was mainly men painting naked women in the bathroom getting ready, cleaning themselves. I thought that was a really exciting way to talk about the work that I’m making by bringing in the figure, because my work is normally very absent of figures.

As the inaugural Fair Trust Art Prize recipient, you’re defining the first exhibition the prize will put forward. What do you have planned? 


I’d been doing research into public bathrooms around Aotearoa already and curator Sian Van Dyk and I had, in passing, chatted about it and I’d seen and reshared someone’s post about the beautiful Art Deco building called Ladies Rest in The Square in Palmerston North. During my fellowship in 2023, I’d started looking at historic women’s bathrooms, then this opportunity came up. Working with the curator we decided that a really fantastic project would be to use that ladies restroom as a starting point. I started looking at bathrooms in the domestic realm and then thought about the combination of the public and private and how these spaces provide accessibility. Bathrooms, for women in particular at the time, were quite a huge step forward in being able to leave the house and participate in public life. Public restrooms, because they’ve been segregated for a long time, bring up discourse and controversy. So I’d like to use the opportunity to advocate for all-gender bathrooms and making public spaces safe for everyone. Many of us, being cis-gendered, take going into the women’s or men’s toilets for granted. So it’s a great starting point to consider different people’s experiences.

I’d like to bring in the Art Deco colours and I’m planning to make an installation at Te Manawa Art Gallery but also put some artwork in the historic space of the Ladies Rest.

What will the community engagement portion look like?

I’m doing talks around the project with historians about the history of public bathrooms in Aotearoa, doing tours of the space because there are interesting stories around it, and maybe getting in touch with people that remember using Ladies Rest and the attendants who have worked there. It would be nice to engage with some secondary schools and potentially do an art project with them. Another thing that I’m excited to reference is the Ralta electronics factory that was in Palmerston North. I’ve been collecting vintage hairdryers and they’re all New Zealand made in Palmerston North. They were all these wonderful colours and strange shapes. So we’re also going to work with the heritage curator at Te Manawa and hopefully have a display of different home electronics related to the domestic. I think that’ll be quite interesting to talk about how things have changed.