After leaving the much loved Albert Street, Richmond, gallery space, Karen Woodbury Gallery is launching their newly renovated gallery space in the CBD art precinct of Flinders Lane this August.
It seems fitting that the opening of Karen Woodbury Gallery at its new premises on Flinders Lane should coincide with the centenary of Marcel Duchamp’s readymade. This installation ignited the fiery debate about what it is that we call art. For Karen Woodbury Gallery, the celebration is two fold; the much anticipated launch of the new gallery in the centrally located and iconic Victorian building on the corner of Hosier Lane, and the second solo exhibition by Melbourne artist Heather B. Swann.
Heather B. Swann is the artist’s first solo show since her recent Australia Council residency in Rome. Here, Heather encountered first hand the weight of human history and its fragmented remains and as such the current work oscillates between abstraction and figuration.
It is no secret that the signature piece ‘Bachelor’, a large 7.5metre branch with nine male heads attached, pays homage to the work of celebrated Italian Contemporary artist, Giuseppe Penone, whose intricate forms are carved deep into the bowels of tree trunks. Swann reflects on Penone’s artistic gesture yet remains true to her own artistic sensibility; it is shy, mysterious and strange. Swann lays bare her own sense of being in this world and thus these works are a place for her to inhabit.
As with Duchamp’s readymade, Swann stages a cunning play on materiality and our being in this world. The human head is symbolic and Heather’s forms are fused together with organic structures intentionally made to appear constructed by the human hand. These elements combined create a set of anthropomorphic creatures that are typical of Heather’s artistic practice.
The new gallery will launch with a private party on 20 August before opening its doors to the public the following day.
Karen Woodbury Gallery
20 August to 14 September 2013
Melbourne
Heather B. Swann, The Dream of Hans, 2012, plywood, paper, wire, resin, binder, pigment, marble dust, wax 64 x 80 x 74cm
Courtesy the artist and Karen Woodbury Gallery
