13 June – 29 June 2024
about the exhibition
Denese Oates’ exhibition is inspired by her treks through diverse Australian landscapes – the Goldfields Track in Victoria and the Kimberley region of north-west Australia. Geological formations, in the form of massive boulders, punctuate the landscape and become the unlikely hosts for resilient weeds and other organisms that grow in both competition and harmony. By working with various materials Denese creates compositions that contemplate the delicate equilibrium between stability and fragility, permanence and transience within our natural world. Her sculptures are often a mass of intertwined copper wires fashioned into abstracted organic forms, each piece beautifully constructed and created with a symmetry of its own. Using gypsum cement, Denese has fabricated imagined boulder shapes that embody the rugged beauty and solidity of the natural formations that inspire her. These boulders are then adorned with powdered metal, typically copper or iron, and treated with patinas to achieve an oxidised effect. Groupings of these boulders, often stacked in precarious arrangements, evoke a sense of balance and tension that invite contemplation. As Sasha Grishin, art historian and critic, wrote of her work in a recent review “Denese Oates has been evolving her own artist morphology in her slow and painstaking technique. The forces in nature are increasingly allowed to dominate her work as she explores both the forms and spirit of nature. It is a huge challenge for a sculptor to move away from observing nature and examining its forms, to surrendering to it, entering it, and to allowing its spirit to guide them.”
Based in Sydney, Denese studied at the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education in Sydney (now College of Fine Art, UNSW) and has been exhibiting for over forty years. She is a regular finalist in awards including the North Sydney Art Prize and one of her large scale sculptures, ‘Spiral Knot’ was included in Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi in 2022. Denese regularly travels throughout Australia and around the world, exploring remote geographical locations which further inform her practice. Her work is represented in many collections including Parliament House, Artbank, University of New South Wales, Christchurch City Collection (NZ) and many Australian regional galleries.
