17 June - 5 July 2004
about the exhibition
Trace and Land is Wendy Teakel’s third solo exhibition at Beaver Galleries. Wendy works across the disciplines of sculpture, drawing and painting to create artworks that explore the nature of place within the cultural landscape of farms. Obvious divisions of space occur on farms through the fabrication of buildings and fences. Subtle, less formalised, spaces are discernible through daily and seasonal activities including the movement of stock, animal husbandry, and patterns of cultivation. By exploring the relationships between shifting and permanent spaces that exist on farms, Wendy identifies specific places and creates their presence within the gallery. The materials employed by Wendy to make the art works are highly inventive as she collects tin, wire, grain or grasses from places she visits to incorporate into artworks. Wendy is known for her use of pokerwork. Pieces of fencing wire and farm detritus picked up along the way are heated and used to scorch patterns reminiscent of animal tracks or other farm activities onto plywood or paper surfaces.
Wendy Teakel was born in Wagga Wagga and has lived in the Canberra region since 1985. She lectures in sculpture at the Australian National University School of Art and her tertiary qualifications include a Diploma of Art, Riverina College of Advanced Education (1980), a Postgraduate Diploma in Sculpture, Canberra School of Art (1985) and Master of Arts Fine Art by Research, RMIT University (2004). Since the late 1980’s Wendy has held twenty-two solo exhibitions in Australia and Thailand and has had her work included in numerous important curated exhibitions. Wendy’s work is represented in notable collections in Australia and Thailand and she is the recipient of major art awards including the inaugural CAPO Fellowship (1993), the 26th Alice Prize (1995), the artsACT Creative Arts Fellowship (1996), the Asialink residency to Thailand (1996), and the Australian representative at the KHOJ International Artists’ workshop, New Delhi, India (1997). Wendy was selected with three other Australian artists to participate in the Asialink project, Saisampan, (2002), a residency and exhibition program in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Wendy received a Canberra Critics Circle Award for visual arts (2002) in recognition of her last exhibition at Beaver Galleries, “CrossingPlace” and the survey exhibition “Cultural Spaces”, curated by Peter Haynes at Canberra Museum and Gallery. Most recently Wendy’s work was the subject of a feature article in Craft Arts International: “Wendy Teakel and the rural vision in AustralianSculpture” (2004) by Professor Sasha Grishin and she received an artsACT project grant (2001), to publish the catalogue “Wendy Teakel: recent works”, with text by Kim Mahood. (Both publications are available at Beaver Galleries).
