We are very pleased to announce Heather B. Swann’s first solo exhibition at Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne. Swann has received a number of important awards and commissions that include the prestigious Goddard Sapin-Jaloustre Scholarship, France in 2005 and the Rosamund McCulloch Scholarship, University of Tasmania, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France in 1998. Most recently in 2009, Swann completed two major commissions for Fender Katsalidis Architects, Canberra and VicUrban, Melbourne.
Swann’s work is at once figurative and abstract, its animal and human imagery is expressed in refined formal organisation and sensual curvature. Her sculptures exude a handsome, human-scaled and carefully-finished charm. Often her drawn and sculpted beasts and birds appear variously stretched, twisted and otherwise manipulated, imbuing a shape-shifting surreal ambiguity. Many of her works are uncanny surrealist hybrids, colliding and commingling different dimensions and qualities of experience.
Swann’s practice is informed by a strong ‘hand made’ aesthetic and she draws inspiration and example from the artisanal traditions of prehistoric, classical, medieval and folk art. Her sculptures convey a clear sense of cultural continuity, even of déjà-vu, as the works’ weirdness, eroticism, anger or whimsy adheres to the familiar forms of practical things such as furniture, tools, utensils, vessels. More significantly, Swann’s commitment to the material and technical disciplines of carving, modeling and tailoring produces sculptures which become original, solid, irreducible ‘things-in-the-world’.
In this exhibition, Heather B. Swann lays bare one of her central preoccupations: wildness and containment, and the nexus or relationship between the beast and the body. Animals appear often in the artist’s work; creatures both wild and domesticated, cunning and dumb, with their physical features refined or intensified. The dog, the rat and the skyhook-tailed monkey are utilised in her new work. These particular species have been adopted by Swann because of their dark sides and bad reputations, and viewed as troublemakers.
In these works not only is there the possibility of anthropomorphic reading, but also the possibility that each figure might stand for a particular attitude or emotional or intellectual position. Swann emphasises a deeper, primal and mythic dimension through the three beasts’ essential dependence on a human climbing frame of reference. Swann has shown widely in a range of significant group exhibitions that include: The Sovereign Asian Art Prize, The Sovereign Art Foundation, Hong Kong (2010); Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award, Deakin University, Melbourne (2010); Marcher sur les pelouses, Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart (2009); Who let the dogs out, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery (2008); Swan Hill Prints and Drawing Acquisitive Awards, Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery (2008); A Room Inside, Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne (2007); Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, Woollahra, Sydney (2007 & 2006); Stan and Maureen Duke Gold Coast Art Prize, Gold Coast City Art Gallery (2007); Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award, Werribee Park, Victoria (2002 – 2005) and National works on paper prize, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery (2004).Swann’s work is represented in many important public collections, including: the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Artbank, Dubbo Regional Gallery, Latrobe University and the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV).
