VICKI WHITE From August to August; redefining a practice

Exhibition dates: 12 November - 13 December

“From August to August” - Re-Defining a Practice

 “From August to August”, a nod to Vicki White’s year by year lease on a Taree studio, documents her art practice over the last few years. Following a serious illness in 2015, a psychologist told her, the way we respond to life is ‘organistic’, rooted in our genetics & DNA. This made sense to White, whose response to her illness had been to return regularly home to the Manning & immerse herself in the familiar landscape of Moto & Tinonee, searching for a way back to an art practice derailed by Guillain Barre Syndrome, a condition where she became totally paralysed, & had to learn to walk & use her arms & legs again.

 The playful journey & immediacy of the studio ‘process’, is front & centre to this exhibition, exploring the myriad iterations of ideas that speak symbolically & metaphorically to the human condition. Vulnerability, & uncertainty, solace in the familiar, walking through a landscape of her own making. Video, photographic collage, & painting, explore the theme of ‘pilgrimage’. The late Irish poet & philosopher John O’Donohue continues to inform her visual response to this experience - the idea that there is a change of mind & heart when one returns to a familiar landscape. “The outer landscape becomes a metaphor for the unknown inner landscape”.