22 May - 9 June 2008
about the exhibition
Anna Eggert is a Canberra artist who is well known across Australia for her stainless steel figurative sculpture. With this latest body of work Anna approaches found materials for the first time. Using hand tools and everyday objects along with coloured cabling, rhythmic abstract forms take shape through the process of making, but are also informed by a consideration of the utilitarian function of the recycled materials from which they are composed. The colours and markings on these sculptures originate from their previous lives, and by reconfiguring them the artist celebrates the potential of the mundane to become art. The prime reason for selecting her objects, is the importance of the hand and its integral role in technology. Once passed through Anna’s capable hands, visual components which initially would have appeared chaotic, are synthesised into patterned surfaces that suggest a collective language of mathematical rhythms and forms. Each object displays a number of intangible properties – materiality, tactility, intimacy, domesticity, ornament and utility. Anna’s skilful transformations are concerned with history and present, with object and viewer and with the ability of artists to transform their understanding of the world into works of beauty and significance. Her sculptural objects have lowly origins but speak with rationality and sophistication.
Anna Eggert completed her Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Canberra School of Art in 1990 and has exhibited regularly since then. In 2001, she was awarded the Waverley Art Prize for Sculpture and was a finalist in the Wynne Prize Exhibition. In 2003, she was a finalist in both the National Sculpture Prize and the McClelland Sculpture Award, winning the People’s Choice Award for the latter. The following year, Anna again won the People’s Choice Award in the McClelland and was finalist in both the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize and the Alice Springs Art Prize. Her work is represented in various public collections including the ADFA (Canberra), Canberra Museum and Gallery, Alice Springs Art Foundation, Macquarie University (Sydney) and the ICON Museum of Art at Deakin University in Melbourne.
