Sydney Exhibition

Karen Benton & Jude Williams
Runs 3 – 13 March 2022
Opens Wednesday 2 March / 6 – 8pm

We open our 2022 Exhibition program with Movement in Stillness from Sydney art colleagues Jude Williams & Karen Benton.

Process led multi-disciplinary artist Karen Benton uses recycled and salvaged materials to embody emotional encounters and interactions. In 2018 Karen graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours Degree (1C) from Sydney College of the Arts. Since then Karen has participated in a number of exhibitions in and around Sydney including Factory 49, Gaffa Gallery and Articulate Project Space.

Jude Williams also graduated in 2018 at Sydney College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours Degree and has had two solo exhibitions at Scratch. She has had a number of exhibitions include group shows at Gaffa Gallery, Articulate Art Space, and Verge Gallery. Jude has also been selected for a number of Art Prizes including the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, the Mosman Art Prize and the GreenWay Art Prize.

Artist Statements

Karen Benton

Drifting away from Still Life’s traditional depiction of the everyday, my work focuses more on the movements involved in searching for spaces of stillness.

My practice blends traditional materials with the unconventional with works straddling a space between painting and sculpture. The common medium of acrylic paint is often in conversation with the folds and threads of yoga matting.

Inspired by the feeling of connectivity, my works allude to the challenging emotional highs and lows we sometimes experience when encountering or connecting with the other.

Restless encounters and connections are depicted by manipulating material through acts of folding and repetitive threading and mark making – symbolising the quest for a quiet place to be still, to reflect and to contemplate.

Jude Williams

My body of work is a collection of highly textured and blurred images which appropriate and transform the artwork of early still life artists.

My practice explores the intersection between painting and photography. These works embody a meditation on a photographic image of early artists work, using broad strokes and thick paint. They speaks to the heart of me, to the deep motivating emotions of myself within my world.

By applying multiple layers of coloured medium to the photographic surface, I paint to travel to places I cannot physically go. I meditate daily on the works, frequently to music, as I slowly apply layer after layer. Some days the process is an internal struggle with myself and the outside world as I grapple to find my way, but others are more engaging as I meditate effortlessly towards what feels like my authentic self.

The painted objects I make, textured like favourite jumpers and warm tapestry, build a fiction around the way I’ve lived and want to live. In time the works begins to connect to each other. The resulting objects are homages to these early artists inspiring work.