WorksWriting
Architecture of Shadows: the sculptures of Caroline Rothwell
by Christine Morrow
Caroline Rothwell, Blowback, Artspace, Sydney, 4 to 26 April 2008
Sculptures by Caroline Rothwell mostly take the form of filled volumes created by distending fabric and vinyl forms with air or molten metal. These volumes derive from borrowed images of plants, landscapes and other representations of the natural world. The artist starts with an [...]
The Law of Unintended Consequences
Caroline Rothwell’s drawings, sculptures and installations consider evolving relationships between humans and the natural environment. Drawing upon a diverse range of sources, from first contact drawings to site-specific historical archives, her works extend the apparent objectivity of these found references into fictive territory. The natural becomes peculiar and un-natural, the familiar strange.
In her silver-plated sculptures [...]
Kotuku
The kotuku is the native white heron, a bird that, in Mäori culture, symbolises all things beautiful and rare. The saying ‘He Kotuku rerenga tahi’ refers to the white heron as a bird of single flight—a sight seen perhaps only once in a lifetime.
Inspired by the kotuku from the bird halls at Canterbury Museum, Caroline [...]
The Weeds of Arcadia
All the pieces exhibited here were made during Caroline Rothwell’s three-month residency at the Lakeside Arts Centre at the University of Nottingham. Rothwell is known for her work as a sculptor, but recently her practice has been focused more on site-based drawing, working directly on the wall with signwriters’ vinyl. Her motifs have been flowers, [...]
Hybrid
Presented as part of Terminus 2006, Hybrid is a site-specific artwork, influenced by a drawing of Sydney Cove by convict artist, Thomas Watling in 1793. The drawing is the artist’s first impression of a gum tree in the Australian landscape, then a daunting new frontier. Rather than a botanical representation, the drawing resembles [...]
Ink Blot Test
Shadows are not part of the real world, but the appearance of a shadow testifies to the solidity of an object, for what casts a shadow must be real.
E. H. Gombrich, 1995
But there is one thing which the severest and mildest cases all have in common, and which is equally found in parapraxes and chance [...]
Wonderland
Stella Brennan, artist and writer
On those relentlessly hot July afternoons, Ada liked to sit on a cool piano stool of ivoried wood at a white-oilcoth’d table in the sunny music room, her favourite botanical atlas open before her, and copy out in colour some singular flower. She might choose, for instance, an insect-mimicking orchid [...]
New Worlds
There are remote regions on earth. There are many quarters of the globe the average human will never physically traverse. And there are areas which can safely be termed ‘unspoilt’. But what there is not, is one inch of the earth’s surface above sea level which can truly be described as undiscovered. It is this [...]