Selected for the Fishers Ghost Art Award 2022 and 2023

The painting, ‘Language of the River’, acrylic on linen, 168 x 214 cm, 2022, 'Aquifers and River Language' acrylic on linen, 168 x 214 cm, 2023 were both selected for the Annual Fishers Ghost Art Award, exhibited at the Campbelltown Arts Centre.

ARTIST STATEMENT :

"My work focuses on the significance and ecological concerns of the river, an iconic source of fertility with its cyclical nature of renewal and destruction."

"In a land with limited water supplies the politics and necessity of water is essential to our environmental needs. Calligraphic marks infer a text or a series of musical notes acknowledging our need to understand the life blood of aquifers and rivers in order to work with these fragile resources."

'Language of the River', acrylic on linen, 169 x 214 cm, 2022, 'Aquifers and River langugae', acrylic on linen, 168 x 214 cm, 2023

Selected for Still : National Still Life Award 2023 and now part of the Yarrila Arts and Museum collection, Coffs Harbour

My work, 'Effigies of Domesticity' has been slected for the 2023 Still : National Still Life Award exhibited at the newly renovated Yarrila Arts and Museum, Coffs Harbour, NSW. The work is a grouping of four sculptural works with concrete embedded with ceramic shards, shells and found materials, displayed on timber plinths. The work is now proudly part of the YAM art gallery collection.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

"Deconstructed and reassembled, ceramic shards representing the domestic are embedded in elemental concrete forms. Personifications of the juggle of work and motherhood, the primordial in conjunction with the refined porcelain, referencing ideals of the feminine, are captured in an awkward dance.

Placed on plinths adorned with artificial flowers and fruit they become fragmented remnants of an ideal. The feminine body is metamorphosed as vessel, with its functional role of pouring and holding is held still."

Selected for the Northern Beaches Environmental Art Prize in 2022 and 2023

‘River Diety’ in 2022 selected for the Northern Beaches Environmental Design & Art Award, exhibited at the Manly Art Gallery & Museum, 5th to the 28th of August, 2022. Referencing archaic forms suggesting ancient pagan sources of reverence and worship of forces beyond our control. The hand build ceramic work has undergone numerous firings revealing calligraphic marks acting as a tecxt or an implied language to be understood or deciphered. The 'Burnt Landscape' a two sided textile work with stitching embroidered with sequins and beads was selected in 2023.

ARTIST STATEMENT :

'RIVER DIETY' 2022

"The River, an essential source of fertility is a vital pivotal life force.

This hand built ceramic form denotes the totemic force of the river, with its cyclical nature of renewal and destruction. The river, being a potent historical and cultural emblem embedded in our consciousness.

Referencing archaic forms the sculpture suggests ancient pagan sources of reverence and the worship of forces beyond our control.

With numerous firings layers of glaze reveal calligraphic marks that act as a text or an implied language to be understood or deciphered. The work acknowledges the need to understand the river in order to preserve and work with the essential ecosystems and tributaries of the  river. The work is in response to the growing political and environmental concerns of water distribution and water management. "

'THE BURNT LANDSCAPE ' 2023

"The reuse of fabric from the home with a painterly application of acrylic paint, marks and stains infer a landscape still affected by recent bush fires, with its regenerative signs of regrowth. This bush landscape in its wildness backs onto a constructed suburbia, affected by introduced weeds and species proliferating after the fires. The lands topography is both arial and a stratified mountain face, its ridges suggesting a skeleton framework.

Approaching the work as a painting, freely cutting and assembling collaged fabric, made plein air it is an abstracted response. Rolled together as a bundle, returning home, the work is stitched together as one painting. As with mending and repairing items of the home, reusing, folding and stitching marks our need to care for and maintain the bush landscape. The marks infer an abstracted language denoting a need to understand the land, its ecology and the devastating effect of bushfires."

'River Diety', stoneware ceramic with glaze, 56 x 28 x 21 cm, 2021, 'The Burnt Landscape', textile, stitching, sequins, 150 x 150cm, 2022