Holly Story’s current exhibition has grown from a nine-week residency she undertook in King’s Wood, England in 2011.
This intense forest experience, combined with her ongoing infatuation and obsessive observation of Deep River in the South West of WA, has caused her to speculate on the nature of her (empirical) knowledge. As the title of her show suggests, she is combining this empirical knowledge with an intuitive relationship with the natural world. Spending several weeks each year in Deep River over several decades has inspired her last six solo exhibitions.
In Look Both Ways Story’s sculptural works and paintings hover between human and plant appearances; they are suggestive, unsettling and beautiful. The major artwork in this exhibition is a powerful full circle skirt shape, Red canopy, constructed from radiating panels of old blanket dyed with wind blown Karri leaves. When pinned to the wall it becomes an abstract floral form, decorated with intricate gum leaf impressions. Story also sees it having another life, “a working life – animating the wearer and the wind that spins the leaves in the canopy above. I see it as a kind of ritual garment enacting a kind of ‘sympathetic magic’ between the wearer, the wind and the trees.”
This vision inspired the making of two accompanying videos, one featuring the skirt constantly in motion as the wearer (the artist) spins on the spot in the bushlands of Deep River and the other, an intimate view of the tops of the forest trees churning and swirling in the wind. These are mesmerising works.The Banksia works in this exhibition are based on the plant’s reproductive parts, the seed cone and flower. Seed cones have been covered in hand dyed and carefully stitched old blankets, and in other works images of the seed cones have been painted using balga resin and plant dyes to create remarkable surfaces that are both stained and encrusted with plant matter.
Perhaps the most exquisite works in Story’s exhibition are the free-form sculptural objects that reference both plant forms and the dress patterns and stitching that has informed earlier series of works. She refers to these forms as “shapeshifters, beginning as flat pieces cut from dress patterns, I join them in ways that could be construed as botanical or biological bodies, hovering between human and non-human form and use. I want my sculptures to have a quality of openness, both literally as open ended structures and figuratively as shapes that cannot be categorised.”
Look both ways is a major contribution to Story’s developing powers of expression across a number of media. She is based in Fremantle WA, and her artworks can be found in the collections of the Art Gallery of WA, University of WA, Artbank, Parliament House Canberra, Curtin University, City of Fremantle, Museum of Arts Craft Itami Japan, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and BankWest.
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- TURNER GALLERIES | showcasing contemporary art
at 470 WILLIAM STREET NORTHBRIDGE WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6003 - TURNER GALLERIES HAS NOW CLOSED.
This website is an archived record of the exhibitions and artwork shown at the gallery. - Turner Galleries acknowledges the Whadjuk Nyoongar people as the Traditional Owners of the lands and waters where Turner Galleries is situated, and pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging.
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