Operating in a space between painting and drawing, the 20 individual works, hung as one for this installation, extend into, and draw from, each other and earlier bodies of the artist's work -- playfully pulling together disparate threads to create a kind of pictionary of her diverse practice. Geometric grids, lines and vines provide a fertile ground to contain, hold and spawn new form, life and colour.  Familiar and strange forms repeat, multiply and dance across the picture plane suggesting worlds of surrrealist arcanery, alchemical rituals, fairytales and science fiction. Defying categorisation, there is a sense of fecundity and fun, laugh out loud moments, visual pleasure and intellectual intrigue.

An observation by art critic Wystan Curnow, in pre-Internet days in 1991 seems more appropriate now than ever. Writing of her work then, he proposed: ...If it composes a requiem for discourses of belief that have long lost their authority, it attempts to fashion from their remains a new discourse which may somehow serve the present moment.

With the works in Omnium Gatherum, able to be hung vertically or horizontally with no correct way up, alone or in any combination, we are offered expansive conversations and possibilities that speak directly to our experience of art and the world today.

This is Julia's second solo exhibition in the gallery, following her ground-breaking ceramic Headcases shown in mid-2014.

2015 marks the 40th anniversary of Julia's first exhibition and it is very pleasing to mark this occasion with an exhibition which brings together so many strands of her materially and conceptually broad-ranging practice. During this time, she has exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand and internationally and won many awards and much recognition. Starting her career in Wellington with a Diploma in Graphic Design at the then Wellington Polytechnic, she went on to complete an Honours Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Canterbury, where she later taught. In 1988 she won the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship and in 1990 the Moet & Chandon Fellowship which led to her spending a decade in France. In 2005 Julia was made a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate and in 2006, the Christchurch and Dunedin public art galleries curated a major retrospective a loop around a loop. In 2012, she was inducted into the Massey University Hall of Fame in Wellington.