Moonlit Mountain No.2, 2022, Fired clay, 36 x 17 x 13 cm, Photo COTA

Annette Bukovinsky’s latest exhibition ‘Colloquy’ reflects upon the widening range of environmental fluctuations in our world. The Latin word colloquy means to speak and encompasses the most serious discussions or high-level and intense conversations.   Rather than simply oral conversations, Bukovinsky uses the gallery space as an opportunity to create a visual language as a device for encouraging dialogue.

For Bukovinsky, the planet is conversing with us in an impassioned and vehement voice through intense floods, drought, fires, heat waves, or the accelerating loss of biodiversity and speak to the intensity of our climate crisis. With this new body of work, she asks how can we begin to understand the intricacy and complexity of this crisis and how as an artist, can she explore complacency as well as comprehend an undeniable complicity?

Moonlit Mountains and the Urban Fringe (Diptych), 2021, Mixed media on canvas, 183 x 121 cm, Photo COTA

Colloquy presents a plurality of ceramic and mixed media works that explore philosophical questions regarding socio-cultural relationships with the natural world. Utilising found objects and symbols is one way Bukovinsky asks deeper questions about our current ecological crisis. In Clouded Judgement, the minimal fluorescent construction strap holding the ornate ashen ceramic presents a sombre moment of tension. Industrial Markets and Limbs similarly pair disparate materials to create metaphors such as the boundary peg speaking to land rezoning and the charred timber resonating with the bushfires. In many of Bukovinsky’s works, clay is the intervention through which she expands or condenses the meaning of readymade or industrial objects.

The body of work presented in Colloquy is contemplative and sombre in mood. They are a series of visual thoughts that look to prompt questions and conversation regarding our place within ecological instability and they underscore the urgent need to listen to the environmental changes that are happening around us. The exhibition is an invitation for colloquy: between artist and audience, and between the natural world and the culture of contemporary consumption.

Annette Bukovinsky works across clay, painting and drawing mediums to reflect upon human relationships with the natural world. Responding to the metaphysical implications of Cartesian dualisms, she considers the gross ecological disjuncture’s between living things found within Western capitalist contexts. As a finalist in numerous art prizes since 2014, Bukovinsky’s work has been exhibited in both commercial and regional galleries and has been acquired for several private collections.

Bukovinsky has been represented by Stanley Street Gallery since 2020.

Words by Claire de Carteret

View more works by Annette

Download Annette's Artist Statement, Biography and CV