Dr Julieanna Preston

Dr Julieanna Preston

Professor of Spatial Practice and MFA coordinator, Ngā Pae Māhutonga Wellington School of Design

Julieanna Preston is a Pākehā artist living in Ōtaki Beach, Aotearoa and working at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa/ Massey University, Aotearoa/ New Zealand. She is devoted to advancing artistic research as a method of reflective critical inquiry especially towards the value of embodied knowing, subjectivity and, more recently, as an agent of intuition, a latent pre-knowing in sensorial-centric bodies entangled in many modes of love.

 

Her transdisciplinary creative practice draws significantly from architecture, construction, design, fine art, sound art, feminist philosophy, geology, geography, literature and landscape studies. In the last two decades, the work has taken the form of site-responsive, durational, auto-theoretical, live art performances shaped as relational encounters between vibrant material bodies and place in relation to historical and contemporary events.

 

Julieanna’s extensive writing practice critically reflects on her performances in an effort to reveal the backstory, context and what new understanding those performances generated. Recent publications include Word Weathers (2022), “motor-mouthing” (2023), “DD: Holding Up the Girls” (2024), restless manouevers (2024), Coo-Coo (2024), “Flotsam” (2025), “Pleural Space” (2025, “A Letter Last: When I’m calling you-ou-ou-ooooooooooo” (2025), “motor-mouthing” (2025), and Performing Punctuation (forthcoming 2026).

 

Julieanna is currently preoccupied with a long-term collaborative project called Rock-A-Bye-Baby, which includes artists, musicians, poets and designers composing lullabies to rocks specific to place.

 

VIDEOS

Nephelometric Bodies (2024):  https://vimeo.com/962956042

this bag, an ode to Ursula: https://vimeo.com/819329182

Coo-Coo (2024): https://vimeo.com/817245490

  • Expertise

    Performance Art; Eco-poetics; Artivism; Creative Practice Research Methods; Vocalisation

    View Julieanna Preston's expertise directory profile.

  • Research Highlights

    Preston, J. (2019). Vital Tones [performance]. Voice and the Unknown Symposium, The Red Room, Inter Arts Centre, Målmo, Sweden.

    Preston, J. (2019). “You are embued with tolerance …”. Architecture and Culture, 7(1), 31-43. doi:10.1080/20507828.2018.1551050

    Preston, J. (2018). four castings [artist's pages]. Performance Research, 23(2), 21-24.

    Preston, J., & Archer-Martin, J. (2018). Performing Bitumen, Materialising Desiré. In M. Voyatzaki (Ed.), Architectural Materialisms: Non-human Creativity. Edinburgh University Press. Retrieved from https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-architectural-materialisms.html

    Preston, J., & O'Hara, W. (2018). On duration. Performance Research: a journal of the performing arts, 23(4-5), 191. doi:10.1080/13528165.2018.1514778

    Preston, J., Lloyd-Thomas, K., Chilies, P., Tofield, T., Howarth, P., Ghazi, E., . . . De la Haye, D. (2017, April 20). "murmur" [performance] at west fragment of Old Town Wall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK as part of a Visiting Professorship and artist's residency (21 March-27 April 2017) with The School of Architecture Planning and Landscape and Culture Lab, Newcastle University [bodies, voices, stone wall, score]. Old Town Wall, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK.

    Preston, J. (2017). SPEAK matter, SPEAK!. Studies in Material Thinking, 16(How matter comes to matter through transversal practice: Matter, ecology and relationality), 2-10. Retrieved from http://www.materialthinking.org/

    Preston, J. (2016). "Waning" [live art performance, three days: mixed media + solo exhibition "Waxing", seven days: 25 A2 graphite on newsprint drawings and props at ONCA: Centre for Art and Ecology, Brighton, UK]. Birling Gap/ Seven Sisters, Sussex, UK.

    Preston, J. (2016). Utter matter, condensed. In P. Rawes, T. Mathews, & S. Loo (Eds.), Poetic Biopolitics: New Political and Ethical Practices in the Arts (pp. 134-147). London & New York: I. B. Tauris. Retrieved from http://www.ibtauris.com/

    Preston, J. (2015). Reconciling carboniferous accretions: A performative script. Architecture and Culture, 3(3), 281-296. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfac20

    Preston, J. (2013). utter matter. In T. Matthews, P. Rawes, & S. Morris (Eds.), Poetic Biopolitics: new political and ethical practices in the arts and
    humanities    . I B Tauris.

     

  • Qualifications

    PhD (2013, RMIT)

    MARCH (1990, Cranbrook Academy of Art)

    BARCH (1983, VA Tech)

  • Professional Affiliations

    Society of Artistic Research Association

    Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture Australia & New Zealand

    Choreographic Practices journal

    Journal of Architecture

    DrawingOn journal

    Journal of Interior Design

    idea journal

    Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice