146 Artspace, Elizabeth St, Hobart: …and the sorrow…

Exhibition: …and the sorrow…
Artist: Lee Harper
Dates: 10 October – 7 November 2013
Location 146 Artspace Elizabeth Street Hobart

Twelve months has passed since 18th October 2012, when the Tasmanian Premier, Lara Giddings, offered an Apology to People Hurt by Past Adoption Practices.

On 28 August 2012, Premier Lara Giddings released a statement in which she said;

This is a symbolic but important step to acknowledge the hurt caused by the past practice of forced adoptions. … I cannot begin to imagine the trauma and sense of loss those women and their children feel after having the parental bond torn apart. …While nothing can make up for the pain of a mother losing a child or a child losing their mother….

Lee Harper’s … and the sorrow is an intimate body of work which responds to the theme of Forced Adoption Practices in Tasmania. Uniforms, veils and baby blankets are embroidered with motifs and texts, transforming them into statements reflecting the mood and emotion of the contemporary community and our acknowledgement of an unaccepted practice.

Lee Harper was born in Melbourne in the early 1960’s and moved to Launceston with her family prior to 1970. Lee’s emerging practice reflects on her Tasmanian upbringing, transcribing a narrative of those times through art. Her works, give us the experiences and memories that ties us to an emotive sense of belonging to this place. Her practice results in artifacts which give us cause to reflect on our thoughts and emotions via the strong yet simplistic use of materials and texts linking us to populist culture. Lee works with a multi-disciplined approach affording her a broad scope in responding to her conceptual based practice. Her use of inter-materiality within her practice is beautifully simple, the results of which have been described as enigmatic.

Lee Harper is an emerging contemporary arts practitioner based in Tasmania. Lee completed both her Bachelors and Honours Degree (1st Class) in Contemporary Art from the University of Tasmania in 2011. 2012 saw her over whelming supported graduate show Somoar- Objects of Memory exhibited in Hobart, followed by group shows with Sawtooth ARI’s Clean Living (exhibited at Contemporary Arts Services Tasmania, CAST Gallery, Hobart) and the CAST and Queen Victoria Museums’ …Come to life showcasing the best of Tasmania’s early and mid career contemporary artists. In 2013 Lee received an Arts Tasmania Grant to exhibit Somoar at M16 ArtSpace in Canberra and on the back of this success she brings to Hobart new works in a small and intimate exhibition titled …and the sorrow… 2014.

More Details: leeharper.com.au
Arts Tasmania