Curator Sheridan Palmer has written an insightful review for Memo Review of Heather Shimmen’s solo exhibition The Sun Shining Ultravioletly One Day Upon the Protean Sea, which ran from 11 November 2023 to 11 February 2024, at La Trobe regional Gallery, Victoria.
‘A prolific printmaker, Heather Shimmen literally cuts deep into her medium as well as into the psyche of the bush. Drawing against the European model, she creates microcosms of flora and fauna, with insects, rodents, quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles populating her large menageries.’
She attributes her alchemic use of materials to the experimentation that her teachers Len Crawford, George Baldessin, and Andrew Sibley encouraged during her student years at RMIT in the late 1980s. She has since pushed the boundaries of printmaking, embellishing and politicising her imagery. Her constructed three-dimensional cut-outs are patterned, embossed, and perforated, with tangled threads, feathers, and shimmering organza that adds a sense of feminising exotica to her installations.’
– excerpts from Sheridan Palmer’s article in Memo Review.
Read the full article here