ARTIST STATEMENT
 

"Aftersummer explores the seasonal changes of nature and life. Plant and human bodies are inherently connected to the cyclical nature of seasons: budding, blooming, shrivelling and shedding. Life, too, moves through different seasons, as each phase of ageing present a new stage of life. And then there are those sticky in-between periods; while waiting for a change that perhaps it isn’t ready to come, and when time is stretchy and glutinous and ripe with uncertainty.
 
While painting these works, I’ve been contemplating motherhood – a possible future motherhood, but also how I continue to be mothered though my mother is no longer here. Flowers—the reproductive organs a plant needs to make new life—can be seen as symbols of fecundity within these works. A vase being filled with water is a vessel for nourishment. Slices of melon that look like the moon; those lunar cycles that push and pull at the tides of so many bodies. Each cyclical period of abundance also comes with decay and loss, as leaves wither, brown, and fall to the ground, to become the rich compost for new life. Fallen leaves and sticks are the materials that make up a nest. The studio has been a nest during the changes from autumn, to winter, to spring; a place of prolonged aftersummer where things continue to grow regardless of the changing weather."

 

BIO
 

Louise is an artist who lives and paints on Wurundjeri Country (Melbourne, Australia). She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art with First Class Honours from RMIT University in 2016 and has been exhibiting across Australia and internationally ever since. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at Jan Murphy Gallery, Bayside Gallery, Sophie Gannon Gallery, Boom Gallery, Bendigo Art Gallery, and the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane/Meanjin among others. In 2023 she won the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize. Louise has also been a finalist in many prestigious Australian art prizes, most recently including the Omnia Art Prize (2023), Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize (2021), the McClelland Splash Contemporary Watercolour Award (2021), and the churchie national emerging art prize (2019). She has participated in artist residencies at Hôtel Sainte Valière in France (2022), the NARS Foundation in New York (2019), and Kyneton in regional Victoria (2017), which was supported by the Macfarlane Fund.