Karen Casey, Tasmanian Aboriginal artist, was born in 1956 in Hobart. She spent most of her childhood years in Dover in south-east Tasmania, and spent her teenage and early adult years in Hobart. In 1977 she trained at the School of Art, Tasmanian College of Advanced Education in Hobart, and went on to work as a silversmith, jewellery designer and graphic artist. Casey established her artistic career following her move to Melbourne in 1986. 'Aboriginal Australian Views in Print and Poster’, which was toured by the Print Council of Australia between 1987-1988, and 'A Koori Perspective’, which was hosted by Artspace during the 1989 'Australian Perspecta’ in Sydney, were among her first exhibitions, and in 1989 she received a Professional Development Grant from the Aboriginal Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.
Over the course of her career Casey’s art practice has traversed a range of media. Her paintings from the 1990s were expressive figurative works which emerged from an emotive and intuitive approach to the form. These early works often employed symbolism and contained an overt political critique, addressing racial and sexual politics and the tensions that exist between the urban and natural environment. Later works were inspired by childhood memories of Tasmania and a spiritual sense of attachment to certain places. Her ideas began to find more metaphorical and conceptual manifestations in mixed media works; installations that encompassed sculptural, aural and lighting elements; and video, new media and digital photographic works.
Casey only discovered that she had Aboriginal heritage on her father’s side when she was thirteen, and on her mother’s side when she was an adult. Her experience of becoming conscious of this heritage when the prevailing view was that Tasmanian Aboriginal communities were extinct was highly formative of her art practice, both with respect to her emotive and subjective artistic preoccupations and her interest in more cerebral matters of perception and belief. Her works of the 2000s explore scientific and psychological themes relating to DNA, the mind and consciousness.
Casey has exhibited widely throughout Australia and overseas, participated in many community arts projects, and completed a number of public art commissions. Her work is held in the collections of all Australian state galleries, as well as a number of regional and university collections. Her work is also held in collections outside Australia. In 2005 she completed a Master of Fine Art (Public Art) at RMIT University in Melbourne.
- Writers:
- Fisher, Laura
- Date written:
- 2011
- Last updated:
- 2012
