Pop Up Gallery

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is based on what I find when fossicking. I see something that sparks an idea and the process of working out how to hold it all together is a major challenge. A lot has been learnt along the way and each piece can take many hours with rebuilds and adjustments.

ARTIST STATEMENT

In my paintings I attempt to arrive at a point where a number of layers of gestural marks, shapes and colours interweave to culminate in a defined space. The rhythm and harmony of the natural landscape of my surrounds is the inspiration. Though not specific to particular sites in the landscape, at times I tend to use circular shapes, which evoke the small hill of boulders visible from my studio window. My paintings are a distillation process of a series of overlaid marks and shapes. In the 1990s I was more interested in a depiction of the landscape surrounds, whilst now the paintings are more non-representational (abstract) although the basic inspiration remains the central desert landscape, where I live. Most of my influences remain to be from the modernist era: Picasso, Klee, Matisse, Cobra, and abstract expressionism. From Australia I admire the work of Ian Fairweather and Tony Tuckson. More recently, the diverse range of paintings emanating from the Aboriginal communities around Australia is a huge inspiration.

ARTIST STATEMENT

As an adopted child I grew up on 'Mallee Brae', a wonderful farm in mid north South Australia with my family. I was my father's shadow, checking the sheep and lambs, fixing fences, helping in the dairy, playing with chickens and kittens and then one day a family friend abused me. The fish trap, used along the Broughton River where I played as a girl, provided nourishment for the Ngadjuri people. I have learned much respect for the wisdom and conservation of Aboriginal peoples, both physically and spiritually. The medium of barbed wire is chosen as a metaphor for my personal journey; that what was once known as hurt and brutality and unhappiness has now been reclaimed as useful and elegant and strong. Today I stand as a matriarch within my family and the learnings of this I teach to my children.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I took up hand built pottery a few years ago as a means of relaxation and to do something creative. I started making basic pinch pots and apart from getting advice (and encouragement) from a few experienced potters I know, I'm largely self taught. I enjoy the process of turning a small ball of clay into a form, decorating the surface and seeing the end result after the kiln is opened. For me, every pot is an experiment.

ARTIST STATEMENT

These works were made as response to strong sensory memories. I wanted to see how I could express them through the sculptural form. I used materials available at hand that needed no technology, just muscle to dig local clay and the recycling of studio clay with recycled paper into an adobe mix. The resulting substance felt more evocative to the intent of the pieces than if it had been fired into high temperature ceramic.

ARTIST STATEMENT

By playing with unexpected size and scale I want to focus in on our place in the wider context of balance in the natural world, to acknowledge our fundamental insignificance in the grander scale of immensely powerful living systems and physical laws. The refuge provided by safe borders and civil societies seems to be determined by the sheer, haphazard providence of where it is that one is lucky or unlucky enough to wash up on this earth.

ARTIST STATEMENT

When I'm working I like to not really know what I'm doing. I don't often plan or draw at first. I get a feeling and then try to find out what it is, try to understand it. I look around my pile of materials and try to find something that fits a little with that feeling, and then start manipulating stuff and joining it with other bits. My mind is open and I let all those thoughts and feelings flow through as I work. Its a meditation and a chance maybe to understand myself and the world a bit better. I keep bending and cutting and joining stuff together trying to let that feeling grow and be seen. Eventually I get to a point where I am trapped by the materials I use and I have some sort of half made thing that looks like this or that, then the real work is over and I have to do the donkey work of finishing the sculpture off and making it presentable. Sometimes I have an idea of a different way of making stuff so I might just do a little experiment in a new way of working and that can sometimes turn into something major. I never try to limit myself, I just try to let what ever wants to be made happen.

ARTIST STATEMENT

What motivates me in making art is the transformative potential of the process; its power to bring energy into inert states and shift ways of thinking and feeling. ‘Spindrift’ is part of an exploration of boat forms for navigating childhood grief - inspired by the funeral ships that appear in Norse, Egyptian and other mythologies. This journey found resolution in an intuitive and playful engagement with materials resulting in the works ‘Slipped’, ‘Scuttlebutts’ and ‘Tern I, II, III’- a milling, bird-like fleet, ready for a voyage of a light-hearted nature.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The surface of the painting is my main concern, along with the structure of the drawing. I try to suggest the qualities of nature in my lines and colours. The landscapes of the central and western deserts are currently my primary inspiration. I am also inspired by road trips to places elsewhere. I sometimes take a point of perspective that could be described as a sweeping bird’s eye view. I use the patterns of nature and a desert palette to recreate fragments of memory. I have memories that seem to slowly become part of the present in my work. The openness of nature is what most inspires me.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Like many residents of Alice Springs I live with, on one hand, the acknowledgment of Indigenous ownership and history, and on the other, a sense of belonging and commitment to this place and its people. Plein air painting is at the heart of my practice because it provides a place to stand, and a way to ask what it is to live in Arrernte country, now. The paintings in this show are based on Eastern Arrernte country around Undoolya. The sensory immersion inherent in plein air painting makes it a vehicle for ‘eye-to-eye’ embodied encounters with country, for tuning in and listening. To these encounters I bring my own cultural background, including painting approaches that reference the European landscape tradition, and memories of Aotearoa, where I grew up. Painting provides a ground where many elements come together: layered histories of place; the desire to connect; and the vivid sensations, pleasures and sadness of being in country.