HEATHER B. SWANN
Oh lover, hold me close
17 July – 14 August 2021
STATION | MELBOURNE
Heather B. Swann works outwards from the poetics of intimate sensation, emotion and thought. Her work resonates with stories and symbols, forms and materials of the past, the product of a rich experience of and delight in historical, museum-culture art and artefacts. Swann is closely engaged with both the eternal present of perception and her own world of feeling, as well as making allusion to the particular crises of our troubled times.
In Oh lover, hold me close, Swann reveals the beauty found in the enigma of not knowing:
"Here is myth: not stepping in the same river twice, ocean waves crashing on the shore over and over, the same, the same, different, different. In these spare, abstract tableaux, you might encounter, rehearse and enact the fraught fragility of exposure, the tingling delicacy of yearning, or the soft, pink intimacy of encounter."
Swann has established a formidable reputation as a maker of sculptural objects and ink drawings of dark, sensual and oneiric presence. Her figurative reflexes often produce images of human or animal bodies, semblances of life kinked by surrealist convulsion and an instinct for abstraction.
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close 2021
installation view
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close 2021
installation view
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close 2021
installation view
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close 2021
installation view
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close 2021
installation view
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close 2021
installation view
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close 2021
installation view
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close - Owl in the owl cave 2021
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
two panel: 213 × 198 each; overall: 213 × 396 cm (unstretched)
Oh lover, hold me close - Owl in the owl cave
Oh lover, hold me close - Owl in the owl cave 2021
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
(detail)
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close - Green slippers 2021
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
two panel: 213 × 198 each; overall: 213 × 396 cm (unstretched)
Oh lover, hold me close - Green slippers
Oh lover, hold me close - Green slippers 2021
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
(detail)
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close - The pool 2021
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
four panel: 213 × 181 cm each; overall: 213 × 724 cm (unstretched)
Oh lover, hold me close - The pool
Oh lover, hold me close - The pool 2021
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
(detail)
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close - Leaf in the wind 2021
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
two panel: 213 × 198 each; overall: 213 × 396 cm (unstretched)
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close - The sound of the rock garden 2021
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
213 × 198 (unstretched)
Heather B. Swann
Oh lover, hold me close - The nest 2021
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
213 × 198 cm (unstretched)
