Diane Quick - Singed Cicatrix

Artwork Description:

Immersed in the meshing between hiking, place and artistic expression, I seek an aesthetic buried in reciprocity with nature. With homage to Aboriginal scar-trees, this trunk-like vessel questions how we experience and consume the spectacle of nature within contemporary culture and the uncertain future of Kangaroo Island’s Green Carpenter bees.

Artist Statement:

Singed Cicatrix, is part of an ongoing series of work that pays homage to Aboriginal scar-trees (culturally modified trees) as witness trees, and investigates the frailty, ecology, adaptation and communication in the natural world. All over Australia, trees have been modified by Aboriginal people but are vanishing due to land use pressures.

These trunk-like vessels question how we experience and consume the spectacle of nature within contemporary culture, and maintain sustainable green spaces that are vital for both our physical and mental well being.

Their undulating surface contours expose facets that hide an interplay of colour and marks to engage the moving viewer, and capture fleeting moments on a bush trail; the wisp of a wasp wing; rustling in the underscrub; shifting wind-shadows across the track; the unhurried allure and tranquillity of a hike where your senses are free to roam.

Artist Bio:

Diane is an award-winning graphic designer and emerging ceramic artist based in Sydney - Gadigal/Bidjigal.

Her ceramic work is informed by her studies in sculpture and printmaking and she alternates between wheel-throwing and hand-built sculptural and functional forms.

Surface design is fundamental to her work, as texture colour and line add to the multifaceted richness of tactile delights intended to guide your eyes across embellished surfaces, but allow you to pause for contemplation. She enjoys the tangibility of the medium and the versatility of form and aims for a purity of essence and a sensual feel imbued with a quirky element. Her inspiration is eclectic and ubiquitous as she plays with clay’s plasticity to shape and colour different narratives but maintains an overall view of science and nature as the dominant source of energy and influence in her work.