Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery is delighted to present Notions of Care from 4 February – 27 March 2022. Curated by Kathryne Genevieve Honey and Nina Mulhall, the exhibition Notions of Care explores the ways in which art and nurture are interlinked.
Through the works of Arini Byng, Renae Coles & Anna Dunnill (Snapcat), Polly Stanton, Kate Tucker and Katie West, ways of caring are unfolded, cultivated, and enforced. The exhibition asks questions about the ways that art can care for both the viewer and artist.
Each artist in the exhibition approaches care in a nuanced and delicate ways, referencing the human body and the natural environment. Katie West’s pillows are filled with eucalyptus leaves, bringing the smells and materiality of the natural environment into a gallery setting while Kate Tucker’s sculptural paintings reveal the structures of support that allow artists to make work, focusing on self-care practices, emphasising the process of making rather than the individual outcome of each work.
Snapcat have collaborated across cities to intricately weave and embroider pockets that carry precious objects from each of the other artists in the exhibition. Referencing 17th and 18th century women who made pockets to carry special things close to them, when pockets weren’t embedded in women’s clothing, the artists explain that these pockets act “between practical container and intimate performance object.”
Throughout the exhibition, care is explored through soft bodily forms, bodily interrelations, and enclosed personal spaces. Embracing the coincidences of nature and its welcoming all-embracing landscape. Using different materials and gestural propositions, the exhibition welcomes a personal and intimate reflection of care. Connected to the body and the land, each work grounds the audience to reflect upon care for themselves, others, and the environment.
Curators Kathryne Genevieve Honey and Nina Mulhall, said: “The artworks in Notions of Care are tended to, considered, and in-turn they provide care back to the artist and the viewer, asking us to take time, to pause, to contemplate. Our curatorial intention was to create a space of calm and relaxation through the use of scent, audio, feel, and of course sight. This premise was formed before COVID19. In the aftermath of which, the exhibition feels more relevant than ever. In these strange times we need to look after ourselves so that we are able to care for each other.”
Timmah Ball who wrote the exhibition catalogue essay ‘Practicing Care / Making Art’ says “The expression of creative skill, imagination and self-interest surpasses the fundamental elements of care i.e: nurturing, respect, feeling concerned, providing help for those who are more vulnerable or environmental care.”
The artists, who are all women, come from a broad range of artistic practices and backgrounds. Kate Tucker works across painting and sculpture, combining various media in a manner that subverts expected order. She manipulates materials to maintain rawness and familiarity whilst also taking on foreign characteristics. Tucker’s recent painting and sculpting process has shifted towards building slab-like substrates through repetitive layering of materials.
Katie West belongs to the Yindjibarndi people of the Pilbara tablelands in Western Australia. The processes of naturally dyeing fabric underpin her practice, contained within them is the rhythm of walking, gathering, bundling, boiling water and infusing materials with plant matter. West creates objects, installations and happenings, that invites attention to the ways we weave our stories, places, histories and futures.
Polly Stanton is a moving image and sound artist. Her work primarily investigates the relations between environment, human actions, and land use. Her films and installations focus on contested sites, presenting landscape as a politically charged field of negotiation. Sound and listening also play a critical role in Stanton’s work, to expand vision and consider the unseen materiality of place.
Arini Byng was born on Gadigal land, she is of Lenape, African American and Anglo-Celtic descent. Byng is an artist who makes body-based work that uses the affective qualities of materials, gestures and settings. Byng’s performances and videos are complex, intimate studies in gesture and action through image, movement and form to negotiate political scenes.
Snapcat is an artistic collaboration between Renae Coles and Anna Dunnill. Ongoing themes of their investigation include feminism, protest, survival and bravery. Their projects have often taken place in outdoor public spaces, on bikes, football fields or in the form of protests and parades.
Notions of Care is supported by NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund which provides seed funding to research and develop new, curated exhibitions of contemporary visual arts, craft and design.
Bus Projects is an artist-run organisation dedicated to supporting the critical, conceptual and interdisciplinary practices of Australian artists. In addition to its core gallery-based program of exhibitions, events and residencies, Bus Projects collaborates with a range of artists and arts organisations to produce projects off-site and within the public realm.
NETS Victoria is the peak body for visual art, craft and design touring and Victoria’s only full-service visual arts touring organisation. Our targeted exhibition and professional development programs reflect and celebrate the diversity of the sector, with a focus on public galleries, regional audiences, and removing barriers so more people can take part in the arts.
Notions of Care is a Bus Projects exhibition touring with NETS Victoria. Curated by Kathryne Genevieve Honey and Nina Mulhall.
Image Credits: Snapcat (Renae Coles and Anna Dunnill), Pockets to hold things we’ve been holding, 2021, Found objects, textiles, Variable. Photograph: Christo Crocker.
This project is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and received assistance from NETS Victoria’s Exhibition Development Fund 2020, supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.
