E-mail and faxes can rocket messages around the world at a speed our grannies would never have dreamed. Via advanced telecommunication technology digital words on a screen or on unfurling glossy paper appear, like magic, on any point on the globe that has the equipment.
Envoys takes a wilfully resistant position against the instant, impersonal and mass-audience modes of newest contemporary communication systems. While the internet can send messages to millions, the contributors to Envoys rejoice instead in the gentle intimacy of the personal, individually handmade postcard.
The objects are travelling symbols of the universality of women’s concerns. Each small, individual artwork, assembled with care in Bogota, London, Johannesburg, New York, is stamped and franked by that nation’s officialdom, then departs on its journey to join this collection. Meanwhile, women artists in New Zealand make their postcard sets, to reciprocate in this global exhange.
Initiated by the Association of Women Artists in 1993 to mark the centenary of New Zealand’s Womens Suffrage.
Thanks to The Northern Regional Arts Council (now Creative New Zealand), The Titirangi Community Arts Council, New Zealand Post and Crescendo Enterprises for their support.