Feature Artist - TRACIE TOOHEY

TRACIE TOOHEY

was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1962.  

She has lived in Bairnsdale, East Gippsland, Australia for the past 19 years.

Tracie completed her Diploma of Visual Arts in 2006 as a mature age student, majoring in painting.  Her chosen medium for the next five years was oil on canvas, with her subject matter being portraits.  Tracie has since been focusing on works on paper and for the past year has been involved in making artist books.

"In my work I use natural materials, found objects to develop images on paper.  My work is full of interesting shapes, colour and textures.  It is spontaneous an often becomes another piece to what it was initially intended.  I want to share with the viewer some of my experiences with nature and to enable this I find myself constantly fossicking foraging and collecting what nature has discarded and repurposing it into various images and forms of art."

For the Personal Histories exhibition Tracie is contributing a sculptural artist book with a very personal subject matter.  The work is entitled "Let me tell you about my dad....".  In this sculptural work she shares excerpts of a letter received from someone unknown to her after the death of her father.  The work itself depicts aspects of her father's personality, his nomadic tendencies, and the ensuing effect this had on his relationship with his family.

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT OF THE ARTIST - TRACIE TOOHEY

Feature Artist - MARINA BANCROFT

MARINA BANCROFT

is a mixed media artist based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Marina has a background in biological sciences and visual arts.  In the last few years she has focused on experimenting with collage and using her artist's books to express her ideas about the world.

Marina enjoys working with a variety of materials, paper and canvas.  Marina is delighted to observe the mystery as patterns emerge out of chaos only to fall back into the unknown.  By approaching her work intuitively she can best bring together natural and man-made elements into a work that feels complete.  The meaning becomes clear later and may change over time.  Part of the fascination with this process is the viewer's response to the suggestive shapes and forms. 

Marina has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout North America, as well as New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and most recently, in Italy.  

Her works are part of numerous public and private collections.

 ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT OF THE ARTIST - MARINA BANCROFT

Feature Artist - BETH EVANS

BETH EVANS

is a visual artist with a background as a Chiropractor and Osteopath.  Working from The Tannery Print Studio in Adelaide, Beth creates artwork that takes its inspiration from her former career as a health professional.  Her work includes artists books, printmaking and small-scale bronze sculpture.  She uses a wide range of techniques often combining traditional processes with digital technology.

Beth created her first limited edition book as a student in 2004.  Since then she has continued to make a variety of artists books, some as discrete works and others that intersect thematically with her print and bronze works.  Much of her work is emblematic of her ongoing fascination with the human form and its functionality; other books come from her personal history.  These present an often outlandish story that simultaneously thrills and amuses, taking the viewer back to their childhood.

In 2011 Beth was awarded an ArtsSA Professional Development Grant to complete a month long residency at Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder in Norway.  Her residency culminated with an exhibition of her work investigating the religious and folk magic origins of healing.  Then in 2012 she was international artist in residence at Chhaap Foundation for Printmaking Trust in  Gujarat, India where she gave a series of lectures on non-toxic printmaking and taught photopolymer workshops.

ALL WORKS COPYRIGHT OF THE ARTIST - BETH EVANS

Feature Artist - WEDAD ALNASSER

WEDAD ALNASSER

is a Jordanian artist living in Amman.

Her practise includes photography, painting, artist book and accessory making.

Born in 1976 Wedad graduated with a higher diploma in law studies.  She has been painting since 2008.  Through her portraits she began to explore the battleground of personal experience with alienation, from there she has progressed into combining her own perspective with the wider political view of exile.  

Now exile and the dramatic changes that come with it have become the defining features of her interpretation of the "postmodern life style".

More images of Wedad's work can be found here.

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT OF THE ARTIST - WEDAD ALNASSER

Feature Artist - VERONICA CALARCO

VERONICA CALARCO

comes from a small town in East Gippsland, Victoria, Australia.

She is currently living in a small village in north Wales.

Veronica completed a degree in printmaking and a postgraduate in weaving at the Institute of the Arts, Australian National University in the early 1990's.  She employs drawing, printmaking, weaving and references to language in her works.

On leaving university Veronica worked as a community artist in the Australian Capital Territory with organisations such as Megalo Access Arts (open access printmaking), the Multicultural Arts, DADA (Disability and Disadvantage in the Arts) and Art Monthly Australia.  In 2002 she moved to Halls Creek in the Kimberleys, Western Australia to work in the Kimberley Language Resource Centre and write Art Notes for Art Monthly Australia.  She headed to Alice Springs to manage an arts disability project Mapping New Territory and then to run Jukurrpa Arts Centre (an Aboriginal women's art centre).  

Since 2004 she has been living between Wales and Australia, completing artist residencies - Parliament House (ACT), Thirning Villa (Sydney), The Regional Print Centre (Wales), Weaving in Norway, Grindells Hut (Flinders Ranges SA), Cill Railaig (Ireland) and exhibiting in Japan, China, Korea, Turkey, Wales, England, Ireland, Spain and Australia.  

Veronica last year received an A level in Welsh and has recently opened Stiwdiomaelor,

an artists' retreat in the north of Wales, which seeks to be self-funding and non-profit.

Kurnai Welsh Dictionary

is the work Veronica is including in the Personal Histories exhibition.

This work has been completed in response to a sentence in Vanishing Voices (Nettle Romaine, pgs 178-9): "Grammars and dictionaries are artificial environments for languages.  They reflect only a fraction of the diversity of a language in its everyday use and cannot capture the ever-changing nature of language."

I decided to make a Kurnai Welsh dictionary to signify the loss of meaning, history, memory, knowledge and growth that occurs when a language becomes extinct or is rarely used.  In choosing the Welsh words to go with the Kurnai I didn't know if they had the same exact meaning as I have no context for the words.  With the visual images I didn't want them to be a direct representation of words, as I wanted to refer to the early use of images by colonists in Australia.  

When Australia was first settled, posters were attached to the trees for the Aboriginals with images setting out the laws of the white man, but of course the Aboriginals could not read the visual images as they were white man's images, not Aboriginal.  So the images in the dictionary are my visual translation of the words.  In the recording I wanted the Kurnai words to be recorded with a Welsh accent, because the sound of a language is important and something that is also lost in the ending of a language.

ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT OF THE ARTIST - VERONICA CALARCO

The work is presented in a book format with a recording of the words by Alison Woodbridge (Welsh language tutor in the Dolgellau area).  A series of woodcuts are being made to go with the book.

World War I Adjunct Exhibit

I am looking to make a small adjunct exhibit to

the Personal Histories exhibition to be held in April/May of 2014
based around the theme of World War I.

If any artists have works relative to this theme I would be interested to hear from you.