Sydney Exhibition

Tina Wheatley

Opening Event . Saturday 26 October 2 – 4pm
Runs . 24 October – 3 November, 2024

Tina is our Mentor guest for our 2024 Mentor Program and will be giving an Artist Talk on Sunday 3 November as part of the Inner West Council Creative Trails Event

An Artist working on Dharawal Land in South Western Sydney, Tina Wheatley works across the applied arts of textiles and ceramics with an interest in objects and the value placed upon them. Influenced by methods of women’s cultural production, Tina combines yarning and weaving techniques with clay, to explore the history of women’s experience and apply this to a contemporary female context. 

Working towards incorporating elements of soft sculpture (textiles in the form of knitted and crochet forms, ropes, or strings) in combination with the fired clay sculptural works Tina creates links and connections threading works together to hold them in space and in conversation with one another. 
 
Tina is also an arts educator with experience working across schools, studios, and arts institutions and has gained industry experience in galleries working at Wollongong City Gallery, and volunteering at the Powerhouse Museum and Campbelltown Arts Centre. She currently works for Campbelltown Arts Centre as an Education Assistant, and also with Youth Off The Streets.

Burnout is Tina’s first solo exhibition.

ARTIST STATEMENT 

Through my arts practice I investigate the material properties of ceramics and textiles when they are combined. Through slow and contemplative processes of knitting and crochet, I am exploring experiences of cyclical and fragmented time, as these creative processes are intertwined with tasks of caring for family. By contrast, dipping the resulting soft textile objects into porcelain slip and changing them into ceramic objects is a spontaneous and proprioceptive method of creation. The transformational process of firing in the kiln alters the object’s form as it becomes incapable of being unravelled, but it often warps, slumps and tears through the intense heat – the cotton substrate burning out and leaving the ceramic shell behind. These material processes provide me with a visual language for investigating relationships between time, labour, care, craft, object, and value, and what may be culturally ascribed to ‘women’s work.’