Artists:
Robert Baines
Ros Bandt
Clare Belfrage
Bronwyn Goss
Jacqui Gropp
Adrian Jones
Janie Matthews
Anne Neil
Susan Purdy
Sue Saxon
Liz Williamson
Artist's Statement
In 1997 I was commissioned to make a memorial to the First Horse Race in WA. The site for this race, Coogee Beach, South of Fremantle, was also the site where CY O'Connor committed suicide earlier this century. He rode into the sea and shot himself.
The work for this exhibition was inspired by my research into this folk hero and the myths surrounding his death and his drive to bring water into the interior.
Death by Water Steel watering cans
CV
Solo Exhibitions
1998
Nesting, Goldfields Arts Centre Gallery, Kalgoorlie, West Australia
1996
House and Home, exhibition & installation, Fremantle Arts Centre,
Fremantle, West Australia
1995
Let the Record Show, installation, Arlesheirn, Basel Switzerland
1993
Salt & Pepper, THE DOOR Exhibition Space, Fremantle, West Australia
1992 Use By, installation, Gallery Dusseldorf, Perth, West Australia
1989 Print Gallery, Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle, West Australia
1988 Air Freight, Contemporary Jewellery Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Commissions
1999
St Mark's Anglican Community School, sculptural commission for
new chapel
Sculpture Commission to celebrate the First Government School, Mandurah
1998
Public Art Commissions for City of Perth Foreshore Rest Area
1997
Public Art Commission, North Coogee Horse Memorial, Department
Trade and Commerce
1996 Public Art Commissions, New Juvenile Detention Centre, Perth WA
Curator's Statement
Anne Neil's homage to CY O'Connor aligns his epic life with the personal relation to water that is part of the Australian experience. The tokens of life and death represented by the watering cans and pistols are inverted by their dramatic absence of water. Is this an insecurity that lurks behind the drive to ‘green’ the continent?
Death by Water Water pistols, sand, acrylic
Sydney
shop window featuring water bottles filled with sand.