April 11 – May 2
Gallery 1
Based in Perth, Karen Prakhoff Rickman is a contemporary artist whose work focuses on the layered nature of memory and time through printmaking. She earned her Master of Creative Arts at Curtin University in 2006 and has since exhibited widely across Perth and Melbourne. Rickman’s artistic achievements include being a finalist in numerous art awards and winning the acquisitive City of Melville Art Awards in 2021.
Karen Prakhoff Rickman creative process begins with photographs of natural landscape fragments, which she takes herself. These images often appear isolated from their original context, allowing viewers to focus on the emotional resonance tied to the land. Furthermore, the square format Rickman frequently uses references traditional Polaroids, linking her practice to nostalgia and memory. Today, she also incorporates images captured on her iPhone to expand her visual vocabulary.
Working on two or three prints at once, Rickman experiments with repetition and layering. She uses techniques like ghost prints, mirror imaging, and stenciling with torn paper or bark. Ink application varies, employing rollers, brushes, rags, and even cotton buds. This diverse approach creates an intriguing tension between surface texture and spatial depth. Ultimately, her prints invite viewers to explore the delicate balance between mark-making and illusion.
‘Between the known and the unknown is the shimmering edge where we linger, a place of questions more alive than answers’ Rebecca Solnit.
This body of work explores the littoral zone where land meets water. More specifically it is based on my fragmented photos and memories of walking through Baigup Wetlands on the Derbarl Yerrigan / Swan River flood plain. This is a chaotic landscape of mutable shadow and light – a landscape that provides not only a place of retreat but also of reflection on struggle and hope; beauty and decay.
“With my work I seek to convey an intimate experience of the bush through layered monoprints that focus on emotional resonance, memory and imagination by oscillating between surface mark making and spatial illusion.”