Niki Francis

Kia ora! I am a Pākehā New Zealander of English, German and Highland Scottish origin. I have lived in the UK, Iraq, Germany, Belgium and Australia and now live between the sea and the bush in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.

 My major publication is a biography, “My Own Sort of Heaven”: A Life of Rosalie Gascoigne, about the life of this Aotearoa New Zealand-born Australian artist. It is to be published in 2024. The book is based on my PhD thesis completed at the National Centre for Biography at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Prior to my PhD study I worked for human rights and conservation NGOs, as parish minister and hospice chaplain.

During my PhD candidature at the Australian National University I worked as a researcher on the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB). As well as writing and researching for the ADB, I have written for the Australian Women’s Register www.womenaustralia.info/ and researched for the New Zealand Dictionary of Biography.

I love research as well as writing. My primary interests are the lives of ordinary people, and those who are disadvantaged whose lives have not been well documented. Projects have included researching and writing aspects of the history of a hapū in Tai Tokerau Northland, and biographies of women who signed the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition.

 

 

Genre:

  • Adult Non-Fiction

Skills:

  • Academic Writing
  • Freelance Writing
  • Research

Branch:

Wellington

Location:

Publications:

"My own sort of heaven": A life of Rosalie Gascoigne

 My biography of New Zealand-born Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne (1917-1999) is to be published by ANU Press, Canberra, Australia in 2024.Widely acclaimed as one of Australia’s greatest artists, Rosalie Gascoigne first exhibited in 1974 at the age of fifty-seven. She rapidly achieved critical acclaim for assemblages made about the Monaro—an ancient highland plateau in south-western New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory on which Mt Stromlo and Canberra sit. Her medium: weathered discards from the landscape. By her death in 1999, her work had been purchased for major public art collections in Australia, New Zealand and New York, and she had exhibited across Europe and Asia.


Gascoigne’s story is often cast in simple terms—an inspirational tale of an older woman ‘finding herself’ later in life and gaining artistic acclaim. But the reality is much more complex and contingent. This biography explores her achievement of ‘own sort of heaven’ through the frame of the narrative she told once she had gained fame, using a series of interviews she gave from 1980 to 1998. It revolves around her frequently stated sense of feeling an outsider, her belief that artists are born not made, and factors accountable for the development and impact of her work, including her migration to Australia from New Zealand in 1943; social changes in the 1960s and 1970s, including the growth and cultural life of Canberra; the role of a developing art bureaucracy in Australia; and changing artistic tastes of the time.