<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />New Zealand artist Jacqueline Fraser completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, in 1977. Fraser has exhibited internationally, including many solo and group exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia. In 1992 she received the prestigious Moet & Chandon New Zealand Fellowship; and with Peter Robinson, she represented New Zealand at the 49th Venice Biennale in Italy in 2001. Her work is held in public and private collections in New Zealand and Australia as well as private collections in Asia, Europe and the United States.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Fraser has both Maori (Ngati Tahu) and Pakeha ancestry. Her early work displayed a playful inventiveness in the use of quotidian materials, transforming specific spaces with the tracery of wire, ribbon and cord. Many of Fraser's works approximated a three-dimensional drawing in space. These were part of an ongoing endeavour to locate a feminine language incorporating her Maori heritage. She has taken elements of traditional indigenous women's work, particularly hand-weaving, tukutuku (wall panels) and taniko (tapestries), as well as string games, rearticulating time-honoured practice into a contemporary idiom. The work Te Marama: And the five-tiered candelabra was kissed when they knew the saint had held it evokes the patterned surface inside a Maori meeting house, recalling the koru (emerging fern frond) and the waka (canoe) imagery which figure strongly in Maori history. Her light and deft treatment of form defies the dense and sombre carvings which traditionally employ this symbolism.