A Reference to Crossing Over by Will Nolan & Tom Borgas / Close To Home by Kenita Williamson
Tom Borgas
Tom Borgas lives and works on Kaurna country. Developed through an oscillation between digital and analogue processes his practice is an investigation of ideas that pertain to the sensory value of actual experience over digital (dis)connectivity. His practice extends across multiple platforms including gallery and project work, public sculpture, festival interventions, performance and education.
Tom has exhibited at shows and galleries around Australia including PICA (Perth), The Jam Factory (Adelaide), Artisan (Brisbane), Salamanca Arts Centre (Hobart), MARS gallery (Melbourne), Stockroom (Kyneton) and as part of the 2018 Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial.
Commissioning bodies and collaborators include: Urban Art Projects, The City of Brisbane, Rockhampton City Council, Splendour in the Grass, Sculpture Co, The Hilton Adelaide, Gravity and Other Myths for Adelaide Festival, The Adelaide Festival Centre, The City of Adelaide, Illuminate Adelaide and Renewal SA. Currently, works are in progress in partnership with Restless Dance, OSCA/The Mill and Nonda Katsalidis. Tom’s practice has received support through contributions from the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts South Australia, Copyright Agency, NAVA and the Helpmann Academy.
Will Nolan
Will Nolan (born 1979) is an Australian mixed media artist known for his range of contemporary photographic works. He completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours in the Department of Art, Architecture and Design at the University of South Australia in 2008. Nolan has exhibited in a variety of spaces including solo exhibitions at Helen Gory Galerie (VIC), Galerie Pompom (NSW), CACSA (SA), FELT Space (SA) alongside group exhibitions at SASA Gallery (SA), MOP Projects (NSW), Brenda May Gallery (NSW), Sawtooth ARI (TAS), Light Square Gallery (SA), and Queensland Centre for Photography (QLD).
Nolan has also received funding from Arts SA, Helpmann Academy and has been short-listed in the Bowness Photography Prize, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award and Olive Cotton Photographic Prize. His artworks have been published in magazines, including Art Monthly in Australia, Esquire in Russia and Kunstbeeld in the Netherlands. Nolan is currently a part time lecturer at the Adelaide College of the Arts, TAFE SA and adjunct lecturer at Flinders University.
toppling tombstones
for fun
on a wintry
infinite jest
here lies one
whose name was writ in water
when drunk & hobbling
you pass beneath aqueducts
too far flung or crass
it’s Apollo arching back
a stretched shoulder
the curve of a coastline
calling out
& crossing over
whistling to stop you
walking up the walls
I revere
refer like a down payment
on your future thought
back to the arched marble
stops like the tube tunnels
plays a marching tune
(waves passing in sequence)
a passage
rising dust from air
stretched like skin
this is a fire in a barrel
this is a burning bush
hot stones & speaking in tongues
carved into the concrete
I woz ere
washing out the field of vision
some optical nerve
words roll around in your mouth
when the scramble of surf
collapsing a klaxon’s wall of sound
in a swirl of water
becomes a whirlpool
wailing its
talk
around
corners
the reference
stays present
as gaps
in isolation
tide returning & retreating
sleeps sound
amongst the thundering
waves
Dominic Symes
Kenita Williamson
Kenita Williamson is a Kangaroo Island based artist, who has always had a fascination for recycled materials. Baling twine, discarded rope, wire and other objects are hand woven into sculptural forms, which challenge the viewer to look closer. She has participated in a variety of group exhibitions: numerous annual Kangaroo Island SALA Festival exhibitions at the National Wine Centre and Easter Art Exhibitions in Penneshaw, Island to Outback at Praxis Art Space, Threads of Thought at Signal Point Gallery Goolwa and Island to Inland at the Flinders University Art Museum, which also toured regional South Australia for two years. Close to Home at the Post Office Projects Gallery is her first solo exhibition.
Kenita Williamson is a Kangaroo Island based artist, who has always had a fascination for recycled materials. Baling twine, discarded rope, wire and other objects are hand woven into sculptural forms, which challenge the viewer to look closer. She has participated in a variety of group exhibitions: numerous annual Kangaroo Island SALA Festival exhibitions at the National Wine Centre and Easter Art Exhibitions in Penneshaw, Island to Outback at Praxis Art Space, Threads of Thought at Signal Point Gallery Goolwa and Island to Inland at the Flinders University Art Museum, which also toured regional South Australia for two years. Close to Home at the Post Office Projects Gallery is her first solo exhibition.
In Close to Home, her first solo exhibition, Kenita presents a series of autobiographical wall hung and suspended sculptures that trace poignant moments of personal growth and discovery in her journey from containment and control to expansion and liberty. The soft, feminine curves of the sculptures simultaneously reference the Australian landscape and Kenita’s observations of the natural life of Kangaroo Island, including both the devastation of the recent bushfires and the lush new growth that followed. “Manipulating found materials helps me to interpret and examine my own life and our connections with nature,” Kenita says. “I’m compelled to explore unequal power relationships and resilience; what binds and constricts; and what enables life to flourish and unfurl.”
Beginning with Constrictions, the rigid black bodice reinforced with wallaby bones and a dutifully stitched crocheted bedspread suggest the tightly regulated and controlled life Kenita experienced for much of her adult years. The chaotic tangle of colourful silk-wrapped sea rope of Entangled Intent expresses the confusion that Kenita experienced in the period following her battle with breast cancer and her courageous decision to seek freedom from control.
Minimalist and raw, Shedding was inspired by Kenita’s observations of the charred landscape of Kangaroo Island after the fires had stripped it of its dense greenery and her memory of feeling stripped down and paired back at the start of her new life. The nurturing work needed to encourage healing, new growth and a future of Kenita’s own making is represented in Nurture and celebrated in Metamorphosis, the comforting womb-like form alluding to a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.
The final series of sculptures, Winds of Change, are intuitively crafted from the flexible materials of paperbark and copper, the random movements and patterns they spin and turn is suggestive of the random nature of events that can impact our lives without warning.
Kenita’s journey is a story that exemplifies the five pillars that she lives her life by and holds dear: hope, resilience, courage, gratitude and, above all else, freedom. In sharing the personal experiences that inspired the artworks featured in Close to Home, Kenita celebrates the great triumph that forging a life of freedom, joy and creativity has brought her over the course of her lifetime
Caitlin Eyre
Kenita Williamson, Entangled Intent, 2022, re-purposed rope, silk, 97x49x22 cm. Photography by David Foreman.
Kenita Williamson, Constricted, 2022, 1991-2022, 183x38x24 cm. Photography by David Foreman.