Re: x15 artists exhibition 2017 at the Redcliffe Art Gallery from 2nd September to the 28th October 2017. This invitation show is an annual acquisitive award developed to enhance the Moreton Bay Regional Art Collection and exhibition program. We can only show a detail of Barbara’s work created and submitted yesterday.
Artwork Statement: Uncommon Ground – Consider the ground beneath us as a living entity, a witness to the cycles of deep geologic time as much as a cache for private memory and layered cultural histories. How shall we read this entity, this living crust which is both perilously vulnerable and fiercely ineradicable? Barbara Heath June 2017.
Artist Statement: My work as an artist stems from a 40 year studio practice as a jeweller. The intimate and collaborative nature of making meaningful objects that articulate personal stories at a human scale has brought me close to people as they seek the right object to witness the depths of their emotions. In work that crosses from human to a larger scale, I find similar histories and symbolism as these narratives expand to scope ideas of place and of a collective history. Recurring themes drawn from our Queensland vernacular architectural detail explore light and shadow, transition and passage. While research into Queensland’s colonial artisans has pursued threads of continuity, belonging and inheritance. Recent works which reference women’s gardens, dreams and imaginary landscapes are revealing deeper reflections on place and continuity. Barbara Heath 2017.
Recent work concerned with our relationship to nature; (1) Land Race 2012 looked at the social histories held within heritage seed varieties now at risk of being displaced by International Seed Uniformity Standards. ‘Life in your hands’ Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, NSW – National Tour to 2013. Collection: Horsham Regional Gallery, Victoria. (2) Maisie’s Garden 2013 (in collaboration with Marian Drew) explored ideas drawn from the territory of remembered and historical domestic Queensland gardens. ‘Silver’ exhibition, Museum of Brisbane. (3) New Nature 2016 – describes a dreamlike, remembered or future plant scape to propose a sensory openness to flora as integral to the formation of a sense of place. x3 suspended sculptures. I William Street, Brisbane. Cbus Property in association with Woods Bagot, BM Constructions & Armitstead Consulting, Bligh Tanner and G&B Stainless. Photo (3) supplied by Cbus Property, with thanks to the photographer – Florian Groehn.
