The works in Heather B Swann’s An unmade bed explore the perennially interesting subject of intimate human relationships: attractions and excitements, awkward pauses and passionate declarations, unmade beds and unmade bodies. Other bodies described in the show are caught in the rhythms and routines of physical work, while Swann’s metaphor of the unmade bed also extends to a group of works declaring the precarity of the natural environment. The drawings display Swann’s characteristic visual wit, surrealist subversion and formal grace.
Heather B Swann, Lover, 2022, ink on paper, 58.7 × 77cm. Courtesy the artist and STATION, Sydney
The exhibition sees the artist working on two very different supports: light, almost translucent Japanese papers, and heavy-milled French sheets. Pinned to the wall, crumpled into mosaics of light and shade, and wafting in each passing breeze, the Japanese drawings are raw, scratchy, needle-sharp. The framed European drawings are broad-brushed, wetter, wristier.
STATION
18 March to 22 April 2023
Sydney
