STELLA CORKERY
Exhibition: 9 August – August 26, 2017
Musical waves float in the sky. A song of summer cones and gold tops. A letter to a friend is scrawled into my thoughts. Jitters fly. The remnants swarm in the base of a bag, suffocated by heat, dust, driving. Wading through the thick pile of fibres, there is no direction home.
The state of being without recourse is perhaps close to feeling like one is “dancing at the edge of the world”, a phrase used by Ursula Le Guin in her 1989 anthology of the same name. Without a map to find the road leading home, we walk in circles over ghosts and grass. Guided by a compass that spins in all directions, we are reminded that the earth is not at the centre of the universe. The way back is nowhere. It is every path travelled, every road that is not yet built.
This latest series of paintings by Stella Corkery investigate states of relaxation, restlessness and belonging. Inspired by knapsacks, campsites, frying pans and survivalism, the artworks present dancing road cones, abandoned goods, overgrown meadows and grandiose explosions. Painted on velvet, they traverse cotton grounds, coagulating gesture into dry earth.
Stella Corkery is an artist based in Auckland, New Zealand. She holds a BFA Hons (2012) and First Class MFA (2013) from the University of Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts. Recent exhibitions include Keep Smiling the Boss Loves Idiots, Poppy’s Gallery, New York; Necessary Distraction: a painting show, Auckand Art Gallery Toi o T?maki; The False Demographic, Blue Oyster Art Project Space, Dunedin; Sparks, Michael Lett, Auckland; and Underfloor Heating, Gloria Knight, Auckland. The artist has also recently facilitated a number of independent projects, including Pack Lite – a roving exhibition of transportable artworks in Los Angeles and New York.
Stella Corkery, 2017
This exhibition is part of TCB’s Prolegomenon series supported by the City of Melbourne’s Arts Grants Program, Creative Victoria and Hells Kitchen, which encourages intergenerational exchange between emerging and established artist.
TCB art inc. acknowledges the people of the Kulin Nations as the traditional custodians of the land, recognising their connection to land, waters and community, and the fact that Indigenous sovereignty has never been ceded. We pay our respects to their Elders; past, present and future.
