Drawing, Print, Queensland College of Art
By Robyn Wood
From draped bedsheets and peeling wallpaper to found photographs, video, and textile installations, Somatic Trace (2024) is testament to the power of materiality and memory in contemporary art. Featuring the work of four QCAD graduate artists, Jennifer Evans, Siarne Holdsworth, Anabelle Honeyman, and Vicky Satchwell, at its core, the exhibition is a meditation on the spaces we inhabit and the marks we leave behind, not only on walls and objects but within the framework of memory itself. The diversity of media showcased reflects the artists’ deep engagement with material and conceptual experimentation during their studies.
Installation view of Jennifer Evans, HAGS: A Journey – Honouring Ageing Gloriously, 2024. 15 panels of variable dimensions incorporating fabric, embroidery, rice paper, translucent paper, ink and mixed media. Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University, Brisbane. Photo: Robyn Wood
Everyday domestic spaces are found to subtly archive histories and emotions. Expanded drawings and contemporary self-portraits fuse body, memory, and place in both tangible and ephemeral ways. It Was a Flood That Wrecked This Home (2024) by Anabelle Honeyman is a set of six intimate works on paper re-interpreting water-damaged film slides found within family archives. The blurry boundary between water-stained images and soft watercolour pencil calls forth fragmented memories and nostalgia tempered by loss. While each work is self-contained, as a series, they offer insight into the ravages wrought by flood on memory and presence.
Jennifer Evans crafts a layered portrayal of womanhood in HAGS: A Journey – Honouring Ageing Gloriously (2024). Panels of fabric, translucent paper, and rice paper become symbolic markers of life’s stages from adolescence to maturity. Configured in a circular formation, the panels represent the cyclical nature of ageing and acceptance. Singly, the panels are understated; together, they carry the cumulative weight of a life marked by resilience and the quiet strength of memory, offering a rich and tactile feminine experience.
Installation view of Vicky Satchwell, What if your hidden fantasies somehow seeped into the walls?, 2024. Found photo wallpaper, embroidery on canvas, video and recycled textiles. Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University, Brisbane. Photo: Robyn Wood
Vicky Satchwell’s installation feels at once familiar and surreal as she muses on the question, “What if our emotions were strong enough to physically imprint onto the walls?” Viewers embark on an unsettling dive into the domestic, where wallpaper, peeling at the edges, is embellished with vintage found photographs and reworked Semco embroidery panels. Nostalgia for a bygone era is tinged with unnerving elements of surrealism. A portrait of an anonymous couple is projected onto the wallpaper and morphs into a mantis pair in a fight to the death through jerky stop-motion. The embroidery panels poke into a discomforting domesticity, where traditional norms dictate a woman’s time. Meanwhile, also through a projected video, Satchwell takes on the persona of a crow to channel an archetypal crone.
Installation view of Siarne Holdsworth, Domestic Bodies series, 2024. Prints incorporating embroidery and ink on used sheets. 15 panels of variable dimensions., size. Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University, Brisbane. Photo: Robyn Wood
In the Domestic Bodies series (2024), Siarne Holdsworth transforms four bedsheets into a display of domestic ritual and body memory. Through printmaking and contemporary embroidery, Holdsworth evokes the sensation of touch. Each stitch and inky splotch and stroke reverberate with echoes of the body within a domestic space. The draped presentation and heavily darkened artworks whisper of routines and rituals, elevating the mundanity of an often overlooked and ordinary household textile to reflect presence and absence. Lingering traces of the somatic manifest across both psychological and environmental realms within the carefully curated artworks, ensuring a cohesive presentation from this quartet of graduates.
Robyn Wood holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of Queensland and a Bachelor of Photography from QCA. She combines studies in art history with practice-based engagement in printmaking and photography. Wood explores the temporality of abstraction to consider the nuances of perception and sensory experience. @robynwoodimages