Staff Profile | Virginia Woods-Jack
Webb’s Te Aro Gallery in Wellington has recently added Virginia Woods-Jack as Exhibitions Manager. Here we chat to her about her exceptional accomplishments, her current role and how she sees this developing into the future.
Virginia Woods-Jack is a photographic artist and curator who migrated to Wellington, from the UK, over 20 years ago.
As an award-winning artist with a successful practice in the United Kingdom who relocated to another country in her adult years, Virginia has first-hand knowledge of the challenges inherent in re-building a career and an artistic ‘brand’ in Aotearoa.
This — along with a background as an artists’ advocate and as practice manager for the globally successful Max Patté — have given her an exceptional edge at Webb’s Wellington, to be able to work with and champion local artists as well as make well informed suggestions to collectors.
“I have always loved working alongside other artists and finding ways for them to elevate themselves,” she says, explaining that the image of a ‘struggling artist’ should be a thing of the past. “It is really important to have a business mindset. As an artist this isn't something that you're taught.”
This has led Virginia — who places ‘community making’ and supporting others firmly at the core of her career — to create an organisation to amplify under-represented artists. “In 2018, I founded a platform called ‘Women in Photography, New Zealand and Australia,’ our key tenets are ‘Engage, Connect, Collaborate and Debate’,” she says about her curated Instagram page that highlights female and non-binary photographers and the ideas behind their work. Although it is predominantly an online platform, it has led to exhibitions in London, Auckland and regular meet-ups in Wellington.
At Webb’s Wellington, the affable Virginia is tasked both with some of the complex logistical and administrative elements needed to put together a fast-paced schedule of exhibitions, as well as curatorial and client-facing aspects of the business.
Virginia — whose work has been featured in Harper’s Magazine (USA), Time Magazine (USA), Sunday Magazine (NZ), The Guardian (UK) and The Observer (UK) and been recognised by the Royal Photographic Society’s Hundred Heroines programme — has just curated her first ever New Zealand show at Webb’s (Tracing Intricacies, 20 March – 6 April).
“I am looking forward to further building relationships within the Wellington arts scene and more broadly within Aotearoa,” she says, “it’s exciting to highlight the new model we are working on, as a primary dealer gallery that offers pop-up shows with artists (both established and emerging) from across the motu.
"I am excited to carry on the work of putting the gallery on the map. I look forward to collaborating with the arts community and building a wider collector audience in Wellington. My goal is to bring great art to the people of Wellington and help them adorn their homes with beautiful pieces.
“Webb’s presence in Wellington has been incredibly well received and it is an honour to be a part of this, seeing the momentum growing, and bringing nationally significant art to a local audience.”
Tracing Intricacies
Virginia’s first success at Webb’s has been curating our Tracing Intricacies exhibition. A group show involving Connah Podmore, Kate van der Drift, Karen Rubado, and Helen Reynolds and which has been curated by artist and arts advocate Virginia Woods-Jack. The four artists in this group show “use a variety of mediums to visualise and immortalise the fleeting and the invisible. These works are all mediated by time both in the making and the conversations woven through them,” according to curator Virginia Woods-Jack.
Cameraless photography, textiles, charcoal drawings and paintings all carry within them a subtext of time standing still, the artists capturing a convergence in the flow of histories to document and highlight certain aspects of their evolution.
