First shown at The Hold Artspace (Brisbane) in July 2014, Lamentation developed in response to the untimely death of my mother in 2012. Lamentation is currently touring to eleven galleries across Queensland and NSW in 2015-2018. Tour venues. The Queensland tour is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland. Photos from the road. To book Lamentation please contact Karike directly: karikeashworth@gmail.com.
Lamentation evokes the period of time when the body has died but is still present—between the loss of life and the loss of body—when the bureaucratic processes of the hospital kick in. It is a physical reclaiming of this as a site of dispossession; where traditions have been taken away from us and replaced by an unseen, clinical and highly administered processing of death. The use of condemned hospital linen, a heavily loaded material, forms the backbone of this body of work. Condemned hospital linen refers to any laundry items processed at a hospital that have become unfit for use and destined for incineration. These works draw a parallel between the condemned linen items and dying hospital patients, flatly implying a shared systematic anonymity and the similarities between the processing and disposal of each. Catelogue essay by Dr Courtney Pedersen (Head of Visual Art at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane).
Lamentation transforms the private possession of grief into something much more expansive and communal, and works to liberate the inevitability of death from the unspoken, and from something we need to survive or strive to overcome. A panel discussion on the exhibition by Dr Courtney Pedersen, Dr Bill Platz and Dr Laini Burton, and Chaired by Louise Martin-Chew.
Lamentation comes with a comprehensive primary and secondary Lamentation Education Kit. The Kit explores the themes of identity, family, story-telling, life/death, grief, sadness, social history, portraiture, and place. It includes links to the Australian Curriculum and cross-curricular activities for Visual Arts, Mathematics, English and History.
Artist Talk (thanks to Panoptic Press)
Lamentation 2014 (HD video)