Talitha Kennedy formed her distinctive style in Darwin. She cuts and she moulds and she stitches and she shapes into black leather the surreal dystopian forms found in Darwin’s surrounding mangrove root system. In between she doodles ink drawings, her pen the sonar dial delving deep into the core of self. I have admired her practice when I first saw her work hanging at NCCA in 2012 or 2013. She now lives in Sydney, and secretly hope this Richmond artist returns home to Melbourne. Tonight I had the pleasure of being at the opening of her latest exhibition: Palpable Voids, at Mars Gallery, 7 James St, Windsor, and was delighted to have seen works by an artist I admire. And what spectacular fear she has scrapped, torn, stitched, some limp, some erect, the detritus of civilisation reduced to primitive forms.
I especially noticed how she turned paper into a wrinkled, shrivelled terrain upon which to scrape subconsciousness into a terrified order, with each strike of her ink pen, a mark that stamped deep and black our fear.
A fear however sublime to the eye, for in her aesthetic order, there lies elegant beauty and whenever there is beauty, there is hope.
First published on FB 27/9/18