Date: Sat Oct 24 – Sat Nov 17
Deb Malor & Shirley Tier
Visit the artists profiles: Deb Malor and Shirley Tier
Tracks and Traces – Unmapping the Land brings together local artists Deborah Malor and Shirley Tier in an exploration of landscape beyond the visible order imposed by maps: the strictures and structures of human habitation.
What lies beneath the grids, boundaries and the imposed straight-jacket of colonial aspirations? Starting with a series of twelve shared works as a springboard for collaboration, the artists establish a dialogue—then diverge, each pursuing their own visual language, exchanging insights along the journey.
Their works circle the same persistent questions: what traces remain of those who came before, and what endures when the land is allowed to shed our markings? The result is an exhibition that moves between mapping and unmapping, structure and dissolution, surface and depth.
Artists’ statement:
As individuals and artists, Shirley and Deb have aimed to un-map the landscape and, in the process, to re-map it in terms of our individual experiences.
They are led by materials, memories and observations, rather than formal maps, in our encounters with landscapes.
As Deb and Shirley share particular methods inlcuding collage, water-based media, and mark-making, their process for this exhibition began in collaboration and then developed along individual stylistic lines.
Although the work of both artists is essentially abstract, references to universally-understood maps and plans abound, sign-posting what are otherwise personal experiences of places, stories, small things.
Throughout the process, the aim is always to un-map the imposed cartography, to bring in to focus instead their own direct experiences of the land.
