Material urge: the art of Pamela Kouwenhoven Jane Hylton
Consulting curator Australian art
30 May 2008
| Material
urge: the art of Pamela Kouwenhoven Pamela Kouwenhoven's works made with found materials remind us of the geographic and climatic nature of the southern Australian landscape. Working largely with malthoid, the bitumenised layer used for waterproofing underneath rainwater tanks, Kouwenhoven creates images that not only depict the textures and shapes of South Australia's landscape, but also make direct reference to its natural dryness. The shapes etched onto the malthoid removed from underneath rusted out and discarded rainwater tanks are selected for the accuracy and poignancy with which they represent a unique geological region. Using considerable technical skill, Kouwenhoven frequently places carefully cut pieces of her materials together into assemblages that become absorbing in their apparent attention to detail and textural resonance. Alternatively, she might wall-mount the malthoid sheet in its entirety, relating it to the bent and broken tank from which it came, to make a large and evocative installation. This artist goes to considerable lengths to source the materials for her works. The dried rose buds for a ten-metre linear wall installation (in which the flowers were placed approximately two centimetres apart) were removed (with permission) from funereal arrangements. In the same exhibition in which this installation was displayed a circular floor piece of flowers played an interactive memorial role, in which visitors were asked placed a message to a lost loved one; by the end of the show the piece was completely filled. Pamela Kouwenhoven is fascinated with the 'sameness' of things and the artist's capacity to alter the purpose for which an object may have originally been made. For instance large rolls of paper, scorched but not destroyed by fire, can be grouped collectively and stood on end to become the forest from which this material once came. Discarded car battery containers of varying colours can be carefully fitted together into exact formations that, when wall-mounted, defy their origins and make powerful statements about disposability and permanence. Pamela Kouwenhoven has won a wide range of prizes. Most recently she was awarded the SALA 2007 Advertiser Contemporary Art Award and the inaugural winner of the prestigious Heysen Prize, having since been awarded sections of the same prize on a number of occasions. She is represented in private and public collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia and, regionally, the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery (SA) and the Wentworth Shire Council (NSW). As well as regularly showing her work in one-person exhibitions, she has had work included in shows throughout Australia such as Terra Spiritalis and Burning Issues. Her work is underscored by a deep and continuing commitment to creative pursuit and a profound interest in the diverse nature of found materials and the messages they can convey. Jane Hylton Consulting curator Australian art 30 May 2008 |