" That's Just Rubbish " Lot 19 Gallery, Castlemaine., 6 - 27 May 2024
Artist Statement
" That's Just Rubbish ” - Candy Stevens Haptic Biographies - Catherine Shields
This combined exhibition explores feminist ideas surrounding women and notions of domesticity and nurturing, reflecting on how we shop, consume, dress and dispose in a society that 'packages' women's bodies and their roles in society.
Candy Stevens uses soft plastics and food packaging as a medium in her work to consider the environmental hazards and flaws of overconsumption and overproduction as we eat from, wear and breath plastic products. Candy believes that there is enough 'stuff' on the planet and so reinvigorates old into new, recycling various materials and objects as part of her practice. In the tradition of Arte Povera, Candy creates works from everyday and discarded objects which become a meditation on the temporality of single use objects and their subsequent environmental impact.
“That’s just rubbish” is inspired by overwhelming waste issues and feminist concerns. Women’s liberation from the domestic sphere and into the workplace during the 1970’s brought with it a vast increase of single use plastic packaged convenience foods. It is disconcerting that Womens’ new freedoms appear to have come at a high cost to the environment.
Multidisciplinary artist Catherine Shields uses a variety of mediums and techniques to re-purpose found materials such as soft single use plastic, tin, fabric, hair and grasses - to twist, sew and enmesh into new forms. Titles such as Entanglement, Mother Lode, and Empty Nester suggest relations with others, including objects, the Earth, our bodies. We are enmeshed in the cycle of materials and their effects on the planet. Remnants of past receptacles of food, litter our bodies and the land we live with. Catherine continues to be passionate about the role of repurposing and ‘making-do’ to speak about the complexity of personal responsibility to the earth and to ourselves.
Haptic Biographies began as a nightly practice of reparation using the simple blanket stitch and mixed media to connect tangled allegories of women in forms referring to the female body.
This combined exhibition explores feminist ideas surrounding women and notions of domesticity and nurturing, reflecting on how we shop, consume, dress and dispose in a society that 'packages' women's bodies and their roles in society.
Candy Stevens uses soft plastics and food packaging as a medium in her work to consider the environmental hazards and flaws of overconsumption and overproduction as we eat from, wear and breath plastic products. Candy believes that there is enough 'stuff' on the planet and so reinvigorates old into new, recycling various materials and objects as part of her practice. In the tradition of Arte Povera, Candy creates works from everyday and discarded objects which become a meditation on the temporality of single use objects and their subsequent environmental impact.
“That’s just rubbish” is inspired by overwhelming waste issues and feminist concerns. Women’s liberation from the domestic sphere and into the workplace during the 1970’s brought with it a vast increase of single use plastic packaged convenience foods. It is disconcerting that Womens’ new freedoms appear to have come at a high cost to the environment.
Multidisciplinary artist Catherine Shields uses a variety of mediums and techniques to re-purpose found materials such as soft single use plastic, tin, fabric, hair and grasses - to twist, sew and enmesh into new forms. Titles such as Entanglement, Mother Lode, and Empty Nester suggest relations with others, including objects, the Earth, our bodies. We are enmeshed in the cycle of materials and their effects on the planet. Remnants of past receptacles of food, litter our bodies and the land we live with. Catherine continues to be passionate about the role of repurposing and ‘making-do’ to speak about the complexity of personal responsibility to the earth and to ourselves.
Haptic Biographies began as a nightly practice of reparation using the simple blanket stitch and mixed media to connect tangled allegories of women in forms referring to the female body.
Consumed, Candy Stevens, 2024 |
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