Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens has assembled a range of her works to form the new exhibition Embracing Shadows, showcasing her 30 year career at the Campbelltown Arts Centre.
This free exhibition shines a spotlight on female identity and racial discrimination, two themes that Dickens' work engages with in a profound and honest way. She explores and melds mediums to create pieces that are pastiches of what it means to be a woman and a First Nations person in a post-colonial Australia.
Her influential pieces have seen the walls of Carriageworks, the Art Gallery of NSW, the National Gallery of Australia and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. She is a force to be reckoned with, immortalised recently in fellow artist and friend Blak Douglas’ Archibald Prize winning portrait of her.
Some of Dickens’ featured works include ‘Bound’ (2015), a set of straightjackets decorated to represent the difficulty of seeking liberation from abusive relationships, and ‘Return to Sender’ (2022), a repurposing of vintage postcards that contrasts derogatory greetings with empowering messages. The exhibition will also premiere ‘Disastrous’, a new series created following the record-breaking floods that devastated the artist’s hometown of Lismore in early 2022.
Dickens has long been unapologetic for the provocative nature of her pieces, and treats art-making as a useful tool in the pursuit of catharsis. Speaking on the exhibition, she said: “I’ve been healing from the generational trauma stemming from the abuse of Aboriginal women for years, and for me this process involves making art. Australia has a brutal history when it comes to the treatment of women, which is often overlooked."
This exhibition of Dickens’ greats is a wonderfully curated navigation of what it means to be a so-called Australian.
This free exhibition is showing at Campbelltown Art Centre until March 12, 2023.
