artwork

Nesting, 6mm steel round bar, 109 x 94 x 103cm, 2018

Uninhibited Lines. I think of my works in steel round bar as drawings. The works are playful, on the one hand like a child who plays in the box their Christmas present came in (can a child fit inside and play inside my sculptures?). On the other hand, the lines formed by the round bar are contours which are normally rendered only in two dimensions. So here, my contour lines are arguably redundant, but without them, the work won’t exist.

There is space in between the lines, so the contours have an additional purpose, to frame or describe volume. The volumes are weightless and so together with the steel, the work is very light-weight.

I make 3-dimensional drawings with steel. Between any 2 adjacent points, only a single dimension, direction or vector is represented, but then and without warning, at some ‘point’ the line changes direction and playfully wavers across 2 other dimensions and the work becomes 3d. Follow the line, where it comes from, where it is and where it is going. Each point is dependent on the point beside it and no point is more important than any another.

Uninhibited horizontal line, 6mm steel round bar 210 x 1,300 x 84 cm, 2018

Crouching child, 6mm steel round bar 126 × 90 × 80 cm 2018

Drawings in Space

These works are site specific and evolve through instinct, challenges, oversights, discovery and available tie-off points. Drawings floating in space are unexpected. Birds and aeroplanes float, but are not stationary. Clouds, planets, kites and sometimes helicopters are more static. These are some of my favourite things.

Even though you can buy airspace above a building and air traffic control controls air space above 500 ft, the sky is still free, or unclaimed and I think largely unused by artists.

NFS!, recycled aluminium coke cans and rivets, 120 x 36 x 5cm, 2018

Wood and cardboard frame, clad with recycled aluminium Coke cans, bonded with rivets and gaffer tape.
Whether NFS is an aircraft wing or a boomerang has intentionally been left ambiguous.

Modern aircraft wings are wrapped in aluminium sheeting, a modern, lightweight metal that does not oxidise in the atmosphere and adds to its structural rigidity. Like a bird’s wing, the curved shape, or aerofoil, is the reason why it flies. The foil creates lift when air flows over it and causes the wing to glide.

The foil is the same reason a boomerang flies and the similarities between the boomerang and an aircraft wing are what interested me. The boomerang is an ancient Indigenous invention that has been part of the Aboriginal culture for over ten thousand years, while the aerofoil was only developed in the West during the twentieth century.

Distressing the aluminium and removing the words Coca-Cola, has not erased or eliminated the identity of the materials, just as colonization did not eliminate the identity of the original owners of this land.

NFS is an object that stems from two worlds and is an effort to find connections and similarities between these two realities and histories. It’s a work aimed at discovery and dialogue.

C[h]oke, recycled Coke cans and heat shrunk recycled single use drink bottles, 69 x 45 x 7cm, 2018

C12H22O11, recycled aluminium soft drink cans, 119 x 120 x 30cm, 2018

Bewdy, 2018

We are Nic, 2017

We are Nic was a collaboration between eleven artists and a life model. We are; Alexandra Mills, Angela Lee, Diana Bonvini, Ebonny Munro, Esther Kim, Johann Potgieter, Monica Sa, Niccola Flynn (life model), Rose McGann, Sarah Schmelzer, Shannon Jones and Shirleen Wong

We are Nic, 2017

Inspired by the impact of other installations of multiple figures, our collaborative work is eleven sculptures of the female form by eleven artists based on one model that invites us to question the way we are seen and the way we look at others.

‘We are Nic’ is a modern take on classical sculptures of naked women. Often idealised, the nude female form has been objectified and viewed under a stereotypical male gaze. We subconsciously ask ourselves, is this woman attractive? Is she too alluring? Is her figure classically beautiful, or unpleasing somehow to our judgemental and critical eyes?

This installation is reclaiming the female body. Created over weeks in the studios, many artists shaped these pieces from observing a live model at the National Art School. She is an unidealised contemporary woman captured, temporarily, in a classic contrapposto, but unlike classical sculptures that maintain the fiction of an invisible model, this work acknowledges the participation of our model, Nic. She is not the result of objectification, but of observation.

In repetition, the artists (10 women and one man) created eleven visions that are all different but bound together in form. They wish to create a trialogue between artist, model, and the viewer who can all choose how they participate in that discussion.

We are Nic, 2017

Untitled, 2017, pen on paper

Untitled, 2017/18, Collage, kraft paper, thread and oil pastel 82 x 65 cm

Untitled, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 90 cm