“It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me, I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.”
William Collins
Fractured innocence and an abandonment of naïve trust in the familiar world of Brisbane based artist Abigael Whittaker has been the premise of her recent body of work ‘stones, bones and a pocketful of storm clouds.’
“I have had to explore fragility be it emotional, physical and mortal and it has thrust itself violently into my consciousness. It wasn’t a question of whether I wanted to explore this topic, but more that I had no choice but to try and understand this chaos and why it was relevant to me an my familiars.”
Abigael Whittaker’s narrative can be described as a tapestry of memories, imaginings and unadulterated emotions. Her work suggests a personal honesty juxtaposed by figures and scenarios which appear to have fallen from the pages of fairytales and storybooks.
Abigael holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion Design at the Queensland University of Technology. It is her close relationship with fashion that sees much of her work based upon “a strong illustrative quality combined with elements of collage, painting and textile based details.”
Her previous successful solo exhibition ‘gypsy’ held at 19Karen gallery earlier in the year laid the foundations for which the ‘stones’ work has been built upon. Of this work the artists says:
“Stones has been about taking the tricks from previous shows and adapting them to a new process. This work from a technical perspective has been about developing the textile component with paint rather than using the fabrics themselves. The tone of this show is more foreboding than ‘gypsy’ so I needed a different approach to creating these figures.”
Abigael currently lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland. She is also an Artist in Residence at Jugglers Art Space Inc in the Fortitude Valley.
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