3 - 22 September 2009
about the exhibition
Ruth Oliphant is an emerging glass artist who is concerned with the interrelationships between place, visual memory and perception. She is intrigued by the way impressions of a destination are filtered through memory and experience, with her most recent work based on drawings of buildings around Sydney’s Paddington. Paying homage to the profound influence of architecture on the heart and identity of our environment, the works also develop the notion that the occupants leave behind visual mementos of their presence and that these embedded memories shape our visual experience of sites. Referencing the role of glass in architecture, Ruth’s pieces suggest windows and are constructed by layering flat sheets of glass embellished with sketching of urban scenes. Whilst each layer speaks of the two dimensional, in combination they create a three dimensional space and the suggestion that any representation is incomplete without all layers of perception – visual, emotional and intellectual. Ruth invites us to navigate street scenes which speak of the poetic facilities of the mind as much as of the sites they depict.
Ruth Oliphant completed a Bachelor of Arts/Visual majoring in glass at the Australian National University in Canberra, graduating with Honours in 2008. Although only a recent graduate, she has already received significant recognition for her work being a finalist in the Ranamok Glass Prize in 2007 and 2008, receiving the Ranamok People’s Choice Award in 2008, the Embassy of Spain Award in 2008 and the Vicki Torr Memorial Prize in 2009. This exhibition at Beaver Galleries forms part of an award given to Ruth by the Directors of Beaver Galleries at the Ausglass 2008 conference.
