Opening @ C&B Gallery - Tuesday April 3, 6-8 pm
Karen Boulden - The Bones of Angels
2 - 21 April 2012
“These works are both elemental and mystical; carnal and spiritual.”
Chapman & Bailey Gallery is proud to present the debut solo exhibition of artist Karen Boulden.
Boulden has combined two animal by-products: the bones of road-killed native animals, and hand-dyed natural silks, extracting a strange new visual language from processes of pattern and chance.
Like manifestations of an otherworldly intelligence, these works draw attention to “…mysterious associations: arrangements of bones appear to suggest something else entirely and traces of residual markings hint at alchemical processes.
“These works are both elemental and mystical; carnal and spiritual. There are clear references to land, nature, art and culture, less obvious are the traces of stigmata and cicatrix – the scars left from wounds.
“Yet there is also an underlying symmetry: intelligence is at work, drawing on deep psychological associations of birth, life, death and decay, presenting bone configurations like hieroglyphs that might even have interested our stone-age forebears. Yet those ancients would not know of our natural world in rapid decline, overrun by technology and a speeding culture. There may be no better symbol of this than the bones of nocturnal native animals slain beside a busy road.”
– Essay extract, The Bones of Angels, Robert Hollingworth 2012
View more images here
Exhibition runs 2 - 21 April, Chapman & Bailey Gallery, 350 Johnston st, Abbotsford.
Chapman & Bailey Gallery 350 Johnston Street, Abbotsford, VIC 3067
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday 9:00-5:30, Saturday 10:30-5:00 gallery@chapmanbailey.com.au (03) 9415 8666
