Trove
Artist Statement:
My art practice is a deep exploration of self and place, weaving together and connecting ancestral stories and present-day rhythms of life as a woman farmer. Utilising foraged botanicals and found objects, I respond to the shifting climate, environmental precarity and emotional impacts. Manual and contemplative rituals such as collecting, sorting and processing embrace both beauty and imperfection and offer solace and meditative calm amidst the flurry of contemporary life and duties. A playful transformation of reclaimed materials, and moments of reflection and reconnection with nature intertwine to unravel relationships to the land and its use.
Exhibition Statement:
Like stumbling upon a cache of forgotten letters or inherited keepsakes, TROVE reveals what twelve contemporary women artists have unearthed, preserved, and transformed from personal and collective histories.
A group exhibition by the Three of Cups Club, a collective of women artists from the greater Moreton Bay region, TROVE presents rich and varied approaches through painting, ceramics, assemblage, weaving, drawing, digital illustration and photography. This diversity reflects the collective's founding values of collaboration, care, and creative exchange.
Work presented in TROVE functions as both personal artefact and intentional archive—evidence of the quiet labour and material investigations involved in navigating identity, heritage and belonging through creative practice.
The exhibition questions what we choose to keep and what stories these treasures tell. In an age of disposability, planned obsolescence and subscription-based collecting, TROVE positions contemporary artmaking as an act of preservation and rebellion, celebrating practices and memories worth treasuring.
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The Oxford Dictionary tells us that trove is a store of valuable or delightful things. And on the face of it this exhibition does show us valuable and delightful things however, the 12 women involved have opened up their worlds, their souls and shared their memories and feelings in this wonderous exhibition making it a trove deep intent. I would hazard that many of you here have a trove of items or memories that you keep for posterity and contemplation.
Trove allows us a contemplative stroll through these artists lives. Each one has generously bared their souls for us thereby allowing us to dig into their troves. Each work is vastly different for the other. They encompass ceramics, painting, photography, installation, writing, sewing, weaving and graphic design. A treasure trove of talent and creativity.
In my trove of things I kept my children’s teeth in a tiny wood box. Not too creepy until I decided at uni to make a piece of jewellery using their teeth and along with one of my granddaughters. This is a real statement piece with the teeth captured in an empty watch which is hung on a chain any rapper would be proud of. Before you get too worried about me sporting this object during my weekly shop it is kept safely in a brass box which I also made specially for it.
The reason I have told you this story is not to take the thunder away from the works these women have made but to demonstrate that bodily objects such as the teeth and in Rachel South’s case hair become part of our trove. Her piece Relic: 5 Generations is deeply personal as the Perspex blocks house hair from 5 generations of the matrilineal line. Not only does this work honour the women it is a fascinating consideration of what we are made of as hair holds our DNA. Caveat here for testing the hair would require the root. Accompanying this installation are 4 of Rachels hair paintings – so real yet in other worldly colours and installed as a type of alter.
Kim Wheeler is another artist who has considered alters with her deeply personal ‘Suburban Altars’. These alters allow us to consider how we might put our grief away in a sort of mental trove. Kim has shown us how she has made her grief into beautiful objects that seek to uplift and not weigh down.
Tiffany Howe has given us a humorous take with her ceramic pieces that will spark memories in all of us. At one point in time purchasing wine in a cardboard box with its shiny ‘goon’ enclosed was how many of us bought our tipple. And what to do with the ‘goon’ bag? Why not blow it up to get the last bit of wine out and then hang it on your Hills Hoist?
The surreal is present to with Samantha Gilkes work ‘Keeper of the Unkeepable’. This painting of a women is captured in a wooden box that has doors that could close in the unkeepable and thereby keep it safe from prying eyes. The box echo’s her theme that the body is a site of containment where memories, secrets and shame are held.
Shan Michaels works speak to her youth and coming out as a gay woman while at school. The suit of armour that Shan has made shows us how difficult it was for her and how she had to shield herself from the school’s bullies. Her pillowcase ‘You are not in trouble’ echo’s her vulnerability and how we worry at night in our bed.
Melinda Edwards’ woven works sit on a plinth in the middle of the gallery and are installed in such a way we look down on the woven and written works rather than having them traditionally hung. This way of looking down echoes the mess of motherhood, the endless number of things strewn on the floor that one must pick up and put away. Melinda is exploring motherhood in all its messiness.
Mel Brady’s work is site specific. She built the Perspex sculpture in the gallery which when watching her felt like a meditation in itself. A deeply personal work that explores her inner self through colour coding of her moods has given us a beautiful hard edged sculptural piece that brings in light and colour to the gallery space.
Marian Reginato’s photographs invites us to consider those things we walk over and never notice. Each small photograph is a complete work in itself and as a whole illuminates the possibility of how much detail we miss out on. Interestingly these pictures are taken using a phone – a device that enthrals us and takes away our attention from what is around us. (I added this comment on the day – additionally it is pertinent to note that the format of the photos is square – the shape that one uses to post on Instagram.)
Kylie Harries is sharing with us her experience of living in the country and how the beauty of collecting and processing the fruit from the blue quandong tree brings her calm and solace. The seeds have become part of her trove of moments of contemplation and have been clearly too enticing for her not to collect and share them with us. Kylie’s bead curtain brings to mind the old fashioned beaded curtains we used in lieu of fly screens. Using the seeds brings a practical what’s on hand notion to this work.
Kim Loughland seems to have a love hate relationship with eggs and specifically quiche. Her humorous take on What egg are you? is a codifying system of sorting out what personality type you are. She invites us to consider what egg we are – fried, poached etc. There is no right or wrong answer just a fun and totally unique way of considering ourselves and others. I like eggs done in many ways so I am not sure how Kim would read me.
Jennis Arderns’ work contemplates water and its importance to us along with cultural identity. Her interactive work ‘Each Precious Drop’ is made up of 80 resin pieces each representing a drop of water. On each of these pieces are personal stories of interactions with people. She invites you to pick up a piece and read a small story. Each resin piece adds to a trove of the artist’s human interactions.
Chez Robinson’s works demonstrates someone who collects and then gives new meaning to her collecting. Each item in The Collector shows a repurposing of other’s troves. Nesting and Rat King will no doubt give you the heebie jeebies as you consider memories of critters that were not invited into your life but once they are there certainly make themselves felt.
Words by Dr Deborah Eddy BFA Hons. DVA
Volunteer Gallery Manager Redcliffe Art Society
Photo acknowledgment: Photos by Katie Bennett @embellysh & @shootwithju
