Artists use childhood symbols to confront war culture

TWO  Bellarine artists are confronting what they describe as society’s growing acceptance of water, atrocity and environmental destruction in a new joint exhibition opening next week.

Celia Adams and Karenne Ann have collaborated on Inured, a show that uses children’s war toys to question how conflict and violence can become normalised.

The objects, they say, act as symbolic reminders of how society can become inured, or desensitised, to cruelty and inhumane practices through every day, seemingly harmless items.

“We live in a privileged society where war is far away or behind closed doors and not in our cities and suburban streets,” Adams said.

 

“We propose to fill what we perceive as a gap in the narrative by exploring anti-war, peace and environmental activism from a feminist point of view.

“As women, we bring a particular perspective: we seek out the feminine, explore its presence and still fight – against violence and war.”

The exhibition features paintings, photographs, assemblages and floor installations.

Adams presents still life paintings of domestic objects such as cups and teapots, inserting plastic soldiers into the scenes as if positioned on a battlefield.

She also creates assemblages from discarded materials embellished with toy soldiers.

Ann, meanwhile, uses a flat-bed scanner to produce oversized photographic prints depicting imagery suggestive of bodies damaged during and after battle.

Her work also includes a collection of vintage handkerchiefs pierced with gunshot holes and marked with dust and tears.

 

Ephemera collected from a previous Anzac centenary exhibition will be displayed in old suitcases placed on the gallery floor.

Adams said the artists’ shared Bellarine base and feminist perspective had shaped the collaboration.

“As two Bellarine artists we use the female gaze to convey apparently contrary sets of underlying messages: the paradox of female as caregiver alongside the feminist anti-war campaigner,” she said.

“We unite with the urgent need to address and activate interest in anti-war sentiment and environmental issues through art.”

Inured will be exhibited at RUT Gallery at 11 Rutland Street, Newtown between 7 March to 18 April. An official opening will be held on 7 March between 2pm and 4pm.

The artists will also lead a series of workshops during the exhibition period.