Design and Art Australia Online

Film of the artist in her studio talking about the works in the exhibition.

The Breath Within

Sculpture and Collage by Anita Larkin

There is intentional and playful disruption of the familiar and the everyday within this solo exhibition. “The breath within” features the ordinary object transformed into something beguiling and loaded.

An object that is familiar, acts in an unexpected way, or forms an incongruous union with another object. These strange and intriguing objects include objects usually associated with sports combined with objects of war. Amongst the sculptures is a truncated telephone rendered useless by insulating it with felt, a gun that becomes a sewing machine stitching a line into the wall of the gallery, the artist’s breath made visible, and a cricket ball growing a breast.

The sculptures bring about a relationship between the physicality of an object and the narrative association that can be conjured up from them. Direct casts of various parts of the human body are used to make object collage. Paper collage from collected ephemera is also a part of the exhibition. There is an element of play with words in Larkin’s art practice; particularly in the titles chosen for works in this show.

The title of this exhibition “The breath within” suggests that objects have an inner life, a breath, a potential for story and meaning. That there is something inner, within ourselves and within objects. There is much more to life than what we see on the surface.
“The breath within me” is also the title of one of the artworks in the show. This object is cast from the hand and lips of the artists own body, with the glass having been hand-blown to the dimensions of her rib cage.