Mikaela Castledine
There are universal truths you learn about life as you move through it. That you cannot always be happy is as true as you will not always be sad. Grief, joy, satisfaction, frustration, all are waves upon a sea, and you have to learn to navigate your little boat over and under, through and around. For me creativity is a way of trimming my sails and guiding my tiller and weighing my anchor; it is how I keep myself afloat and moving. Each of my pieces represents a thought, a story, an emotion, they are a way of asking a question, not to receive an answer, but to acknowledge that the question is a good one and is there to be asked.
I grew up in the unconventional house of an artist and a craftsman and so very naturally fell into art and making as a way of life. However, acceding to my mother’s determination that her children have something to fall back on I studied biology at university instead of art, going on to study interior design and later a Masters in writing and literature. These various areas of study, rather than diverting my attention from my art practice have instead fed into it and my work encompasses my interest in philosophy, animal (including human) behaviour and architecture as well as nourishing my need for story.
My creative impulse is to make things out of anything that comes to hand; paper, thread, wire, wood or words. I am inspired by everything that crosses my path. With both my collage work and my writing I try to capture the feelings that places evoke in me. With my crochet work inspiration often gets caught up with the logistics and facts of my craft. What happens if I do this? How might I make that shape? Is it possible to crochet a full sized rhinoceros? I love making the materials work for me and when they don’t, I simply unravel the stitches and try again from another angle. I find the problem solving aspect of this work immensely satisfying. I also find the repetitive nature meditative and soothing and the results pleasing and often amusing.
Denise Pepper
Denise Pepper (BVA) is a WA artist and the recipient of the 2017 WA Sculptor Scholarship at Cottesloe Sculpture by the Sea. Initiallyan art-glass sculptorPepper’s recent practice has featured the creation of large Sculptural worksutilising a variety of materials and is a regular contributoratthe Sculpture by the Sea exhibitions both in Cottesloe and Bondi. Pepper won the 2012 National Ranamok Art Glass Prize,and was named the 2009 Ausglass Emerging Artist, (the Vicki Torr Prize). Pepper has also won numerous Peoples choice and Sculpture Prizes at Australian exhibitions. Pepper’s work regularly considers the craftsmanship in the fabrication of lace and embroidery by translating this textiles-based research into unique glass and sculptural art. Her art applies an innovative use of materials and design to construct an imaginative concept
Judy Rogers
Artist Judy Rogers has a knack for making us look, and look again.Her work brings a sense of excitement, drama, tenderness and even erotica to everyday life. Perth has very few truly original artists with the ability to shock us into seeing things differently, with a visual language of their own. Rogers is in this class.From a distance her works look like photo-realist paintings. Close up they becomecross-hatched drawings using lines to form faces and bodies, like the etchings ofRembrandt or Norman Lindsay. Look again and you see the drawings are on —plywood!Rogers arrived here from Hungary 24years ago with an artistic direction and style that was already developed. She staged a string of exhibitions and won prizes for domestic scenes as she employed her unfamiliar techniques with confidence and authority.Rogers has now taken to botanica, but she has not become a scientific illustrator.“I don’t want to bring cuttings into the studio and rearrange them to mimic life,” she says. “The outcome looks like an open-casket funeral to me.”Instead, Rogers uses her well-honed techniques to create “portraits” of plants, just as one makes a portrait ofa human being. Each portrait has an added poignancy because it is a painting of a familiar plant, just as she paints her family members. As an added twist she has taken to depicting our bushfire-resilient native flora with charcoal.
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