Kathy Temin
My Monument: Black Garden
Kathy Temin My Monument: Black Garden 2010–11 (detail), synthetic fur, synthetic filling, wood and steel, 365 × 800 × 300 cm. Image courtesy the artist & Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.
AGNSW Contemporary Project
Australian artist Kathy Temin creates her most ambitious work to date for the AGNSW Contemporary Projects series.
Enormous in scale, My Monument: Black Garden 2010–11 has been made specifically in relation to the architecture of the Gallery’s Contemporary Project Space and draws on influences ranging from Temin’s family’s cultural displacement, to popular culture and art history. The sculpture is made up of tree-like forms covered in fake fur – cushiony pillars that act as both an impenetrable wall and a simulated landscape.
Temin is interested in creating an experience for viewers that shifts between confronting and contemplative in order to explore ideas related to memory, history and loss. My Monument: Black Garden refers to the function of monuments as objects that demarcate public spaces for private thought, as well as the arrangement of landscaped gardens – sites associated with contemplation, decay and renewal. While the artwork’s blackness is redolent of mourning, the evocative use of synthetic fur also alludes to soft toys, comfort and refuge.
The artist is known for the interplay she creates between disparate qualities: the familiar and strange, literal and metaphoric, organic and artificial, solemn and kitsch.
AGNSW Contemporary Projects are supported by Andrew Cameron.
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