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We told our stories to one another and when turning to the women around us, were frustrated to keep encountering more and more. |
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THE ARTISTS
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LAURA CONDRENLaura Condren is a Sydney based National Art School alumni whose practice spans ceramics, soft sculpture, painting and beyond. She explores both the physical and psychological experience of womanhood working with organic forms that mimic flesh and skin.
Instagram: @condren_sculpts ARTISTS STATEMENT
The Earthbleed series details the exploration of trauma on the female psyche and its relation to changing landscape. This fascination with infertility in the harsh Australian landscape and its colonial lack of understanding connects to my yearning for the innate and deeply spiritual healing mutually experienced by women amid these changing socio-political times. This series was a direct response to personal unresolved psychological traumas, addiction and loss as well as inspired by my visit to the site of Mount Bell in the Dharug Nation amid this period of healing. The fragmentation of landscapes in the surface texture of the paintings relate to Mount Bell’s desolation due to the 2019 bushfires which seem long forgotten amid the rise of the COVID 19 pandemic and its broadcasting. These works focus on a constant process of growth and decay as each layer is submerged in the next, leaving fragments of the previous stories. My work is heavily process based and intuitive as I let my environment and materials dominate the layering process. I feel overstimulated and oversensitive to the current environmental and political climate and use my painting as a tool to decompress and self soothe. My process of emotional expulsion onto the canvas as opposed to a preconceived notion of how the piece may end aims to achieve a moment of therapeutic catharsis. The Earthbleed series aims to resemble abstractions of the Australian landscape as well as draw reference to abandoned rural sites and their association to the idea of barrenness. |
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CARINA CAPONECarina Capone is a Sydney based sculptor and ceramacist with a Bachelor of Fine arts from the National Art School currently undertaking postgraduate study in Sustainability with USYD.
She mixes classical fine art techniques with crafts and artisan skills to produce ceramics, candles and textiles. CV and Portfolio: caponecarina.com Instagram: @caponecarina ARTISTS STATEMENT
My work has revolved around self and craving for a long time, I make what I need, whether it’s what I need to share or what I need to see more of in the world. I strive to make my work accessible, democratic and relatable; I want to enrich people's lives and thinking, but in no way speak down to them, as a young woman I’m really over being spoken down to. Many of my objects are designed to be used, touched, and held. That is really what draws me to ceramics, I want everything to be taken home and loved by someone. My hope is whichever piece you find a connection with can be a reoccurring source of joy or laughter; better my art means a lot to one person than very little to millions. This show came about through conversation with my friends and my work reflects the way we share with one another. It’s comical, making light of that which is difficult to carry, and personal, because I trust these women with everything. Making felt empowering, I reviewed stresses that I had set aside to deal with later and never came back to. I remembered how confused, exhausted and distraught I have been in my own body. The “Tax Me Baby One More Time” candles are probably drawing form the oldest memories; I had a stupidly irregular period as a teenager. It never came on time, skipped a month, fluctuated between spotting and Niagara Falls. It was stressful, unpredictable, and messy. I think these ‘guaranteed to stain’ tiny beetroot explosions capture that well, but also provide some humour and beauty to something that lacked it. “Hurt Like a Motherfucker” is about the experience of having my uterus reject an IUD, it hurt like a motherfucker. It felt as if the thing were that huge, and I had a lot of tests afterwards to make sure it hadn’t done any damage, I was lucky, other women have not been. I’ve particularly enjoyed keeping this piece on my bedroom wall leading up to the show. The show contains a lot of anger and grief but asking women to stay unemotional in order to make their information more comfortable and ‘professional’ is bullshite, and these women don’t deserve to be treated that way. |
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BEATRICE BUCKLAND-WILLISBeatrice Buckland-Willis is a Sydney based artist, currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Art at the National Art School (SYD). Majoring in Printmaking, she is interested in all things print, and much of her work utilises traditional print processes such as relief, intaglio, lithography and screen.
CV and Portfolio: www.beabuckland-willis.com/ Instagram: @beadoesntknowwhatshesdoing ARTISTS STATEMENT
My work aims to explore the intricacies of chronic pain, and specifically, the challenges facing women identifying individuals and members of the queer community in relation to the dismissal of pain and illness. Inspired by my own experiences with chronic pain and the impact of orthopaedic surgery on both physical and mental health, I have been researching the broader pain experience. What has come to my attention through this research is the disproportionate amount of female-identifying individuals who experience dismissal of pain, specifically relating to what is considered ‘women’s issues’. Contemplating issues surrounding this dismissal, it is impossible to overlook the expression- or lack thereof- of female rage, and rage as a way of artmaking. The lino plates themselves are based on photographs taken by the myself, of construction sites in my local area. Using these images as a kind of template, I’ve created a series of repetitive patterns using geometric lines and shapes directly sourced from the construction imagery. These patterns are reminiscent of the scaffolding source material, however, they also speak to surgical intervention and the healing body. The bold black and white graphic linework is symbolic of the interplay between the interior and exterior of the body, as breached through the surgical process. Having undergone significant spinal surgery as a child, I’m interested in the way metallic orthopaedic implants (screws, rods and hooks) have a similar function in both the re-constructed body and scaffolding in the construction of a building. I aim to use this construction imagery as a way to draw attention to the parallels between the brutality of orthopaedic surgery and the brute force used to build an architectural structure. The introduction of plaster into the series has been a natural experimental progression of the works, as plaster acts as both an industrial material used to patch and sculpt, and a medical grade casting material used to literally scaffold the body. Plaster as a material is incredibly tactile to me as the maker, and its fragility can be compared to the fragility of skin. There is also a personal connection for me, as a child I had to wear a spinal brace and the process of creating these custom braces involved plastering the entire body to get a mould of the torso and hips. Having undergone this procedure a few times as I grew, the strange loss of autonomy of being restrained as warm plaster is slapped onto the skin is a vivid memory I want to incorporate into the work. Interested in the experience of viewing the work in an installation-esque series, I’m intrigued by how the act of viewing the works causes the viewer to contort the body to crouch, crawl or peer through small confined spaces. This in turn is inviting the audience to step into this world of discomfort. |
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BRONTE NICOLE SCOTTBronte Nicole-Scott is a Sydney based artist with a Diploma in Visual Arts from TAFE Queensland. She has studied in Brisbane and later at Sydney's National Art School.
Her practice spans print, painting and drawing; she has a feminist focus in her conceptual practice drawing from personal trauma, a myriad of experience and moments of sisterhood. Instagram: @f0ur_eyes ARTISTS STATEMENT
These three works are exploring the process and journey of having a first period while working underage in a brothel. When you don’t have your mother or other family members to turn to you have to put your body into the hands of women you don’t know and don’t trust. The works touches on having an innocent, natural experience in a young person life in a deeply unsafe patriarchal environment. |
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CLAIRE WELCHClaire Welch is completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School in 2020. Their printmaking investigates experiences of body trauma, and is exceptionally emotive and raw.
Working with monotypes they creates haunting unique images full of coiled tension. Instagram: @slaterbuggie ARTISTS STATEMENT
In my work the body is in a constant state of becoming, a living action that is not discrete from the self but not truly understood. I work with monotypes to create unique images that collect that tension. Initially the project began with themes of fear of an unknown in our bodily function. This anxiety was viewed through a dislocation between body and self. I drew on personal experience of body trauma, exhaustion and fear. Printmaking is a highly physical process requiring increasing energy with increasing scale, my conceptual practice draws from the experience my material practice creates. Each monotype is a singular unreplicable print that captures gestural mark making rapidly and gives a sense if immediate presense. |
RATIONALE
2020 Luxury Item RATIONALE
Curated by Carina Capone Luxury Item 2020 was a Print, Ceramic, Sculpture and Painting show exploring personal experiences with prejudice surrounding women's health. Featuring Bea Buckland-Willis, Bronte Nicole-Scott, Carina Capone, Claire Welch, Laura Hayley and Laura Condren.
The show evolved from personal conversations and expressions of frustration between friends. We told our stories to one another and when turning to the women around us, were frustrated to keep encountering more and more.
Women’s health has for a long time been treated as a social problem where women need to toughen up, keep a stiff upper lip, not offend, accept their lot and not get hysterical; rather than the public health epidemic that it is. Rather than being tackled with science and medicine, our issues have been confronted with bias, platitudes, prejudice and personal ‘opinions’ from health care professionals that have no grounding in fact.
It is traumatic; it leaves women untreated, mistreated, misdiagnosed, exhausted, isolated and in pain.
Curated by Carina Capone Luxury Item 2020 was a Print, Ceramic, Sculpture and Painting show exploring personal experiences with prejudice surrounding women's health. Featuring Bea Buckland-Willis, Bronte Nicole-Scott, Carina Capone, Claire Welch, Laura Hayley and Laura Condren.
The show evolved from personal conversations and expressions of frustration between friends. We told our stories to one another and when turning to the women around us, were frustrated to keep encountering more and more.
Women’s health has for a long time been treated as a social problem where women need to toughen up, keep a stiff upper lip, not offend, accept their lot and not get hysterical; rather than the public health epidemic that it is. Rather than being tackled with science and medicine, our issues have been confronted with bias, platitudes, prejudice and personal ‘opinions’ from health care professionals that have no grounding in fact.
It is traumatic; it leaves women untreated, mistreated, misdiagnosed, exhausted, isolated and in pain.
...
Back in 2001 a report from the University of Maryland revealed that health care practitioners were making decisions regarding women’s care in direct contradiction with contemporary medical science. This results in women receiving less aggressive treatment plans than men and more often being prescribed sedatives when men were prescribed pain killers.
Right now, the Department of Health’s National Women’s Health Strategy for 2020-2030 identifies numerous areas where they believe health care professionals should be provided with further education and awareness, including: breastfeeding, menopause, older women’s health, cardiovascular disease, and endometriosis. Australia is aware that our health care works are not fully equipped to help women. There isn’t enough being done.
Globally women still make up only 31% of clinical trial participants, and even when women are present in trials, results are not reported on the basis of sex; so there is so little data on where women’s experiences and side effects diverge from men’s.
The Australian Gender Equity in Health Research Group describe the key problem as:
“The historical assumption that female biological processes are, paradoxically, thought to interfere with research to a sufficient degree to justify the exclusion of women, and yet men and women are thought to be homogeneous enough that research results from male studies can be generalised to women.”
The treatments aren’t designed for us, the doctors don’t believe us, the science skirts around us, the law does not protect us.
We must defend each other.
These issues are entirely intersectional, they compound disadvantages faced by LGBTIQ+ women, by Indigenous women, by women of colour and women from low socioeconomic backgrounds. AND the unequitable health treatment effects everyone who isn’t a normative white male, that means transgender men and women, indigenous men and men of colour. None of them are fairly represented in the science, in the treatment, in the diagnostic tools.
The same survey that found women only made up 31% of trial participants, found no transgender or intersex people were reported in those same trials.
We need to tell these stories, for our own healing and to incite change. Stop telling women their anger doesn’t belong, stop telling women they need to be less emotional in order to have a seat at the table. Stop telling women they don’t have it so bad and should be grateful. I can be grateful and angry. I can be lucky and deserve better. And I can be as incensed as I want for the people in my life that are unlucky, and really, really deserve better.
Emotion does not invalidate facts.
We are allowed to feel.
Right now, the Department of Health’s National Women’s Health Strategy for 2020-2030 identifies numerous areas where they believe health care professionals should be provided with further education and awareness, including: breastfeeding, menopause, older women’s health, cardiovascular disease, and endometriosis. Australia is aware that our health care works are not fully equipped to help women. There isn’t enough being done.
Globally women still make up only 31% of clinical trial participants, and even when women are present in trials, results are not reported on the basis of sex; so there is so little data on where women’s experiences and side effects diverge from men’s.
The Australian Gender Equity in Health Research Group describe the key problem as:
“The historical assumption that female biological processes are, paradoxically, thought to interfere with research to a sufficient degree to justify the exclusion of women, and yet men and women are thought to be homogeneous enough that research results from male studies can be generalised to women.”
The treatments aren’t designed for us, the doctors don’t believe us, the science skirts around us, the law does not protect us.
We must defend each other.
These issues are entirely intersectional, they compound disadvantages faced by LGBTIQ+ women, by Indigenous women, by women of colour and women from low socioeconomic backgrounds. AND the unequitable health treatment effects everyone who isn’t a normative white male, that means transgender men and women, indigenous men and men of colour. None of them are fairly represented in the science, in the treatment, in the diagnostic tools.
The same survey that found women only made up 31% of trial participants, found no transgender or intersex people were reported in those same trials.
We need to tell these stories, for our own healing and to incite change. Stop telling women their anger doesn’t belong, stop telling women they need to be less emotional in order to have a seat at the table. Stop telling women they don’t have it so bad and should be grateful. I can be grateful and angry. I can be lucky and deserve better. And I can be as incensed as I want for the people in my life that are unlucky, and really, really deserve better.
Emotion does not invalidate facts.
We are allowed to feel.
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The show wasn’t solely about the worst of it, we also brought laughter and light. We remembered the friends that helped us, the joy we shared and made light of the difficult stuff. We want to take some of that power back and share that with you.
The women in this show have been unimaginably strong in putting themselves out there, they are to be congratulated. Their stories cross policing of their bodies, disrespect of their bodies, assault, trauma inflicted by medical practitioners, trauma mismanaged by medical practitioners, experiences of shock and isolation from puberty, social stigma, familial pressure, and other moments of exhaustion, shame, fear and pain experienced due to gender.
The individual artist statements found in their profile discuss what they have each brought to their art.
We would also like to thank the women in our lives who shared their stories with us personally. You support us, validate us, make us feel less alone and we hope we can do the same for you.
The women in this show have been unimaginably strong in putting themselves out there, they are to be congratulated. Their stories cross policing of their bodies, disrespect of their bodies, assault, trauma inflicted by medical practitioners, trauma mismanaged by medical practitioners, experiences of shock and isolation from puberty, social stigma, familial pressure, and other moments of exhaustion, shame, fear and pain experienced due to gender.
The individual artist statements found in their profile discuss what they have each brought to their art.
We would also like to thank the women in our lives who shared their stories with us personally. You support us, validate us, make us feel less alone and we hope we can do the same for you.
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Please direct all general enquires to Carina Capone artist and curator of the 2020 show at luxuryitemshow@gmail.com
Interest in commissions or print editions can be directed to the individual artists, you can find their website and/or social media on their profile pages.
Interest in commissions or print editions can be directed to the individual artists, you can find their website and/or social media on their profile pages.
