Jody Graham is a multidisciplinary artist who uses unconventional tools and approaches when drawing, such as a rocks, bones or wire bound to the back of her hand or a bent umbrella. Jody Graham’s ideas celebrate the broken, displaced and forgotten, speaking to a compulsion to restore and rescue discarded material with an anti-consumerist and recycling ethos.
Selected as a finalist in the 2021 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award
My practice revolves around mark making, I am constantly seeking new methods and materials to explore drawing.
After the Black Summer fires swept through Australia, I witnessed widespread charred destruction.
As a result, I used burnt wood from the fires to depict the devastated wildlife, environment and landscape.
In the Fly like a Bird series I have transformed charcoal from the Australian Black Summer megafires to depict native birds trying to escape and relocate. Several drawings in this series have been darned and stitched to echo my attraction to the makeshift and the need to repair and preserve.
Artworks in this collection are drawn with burnt wood, tree sap and ochre from the fires.
My art is a testimony to wildlife, its endurance and a declaration that we must protect and preserve their diminishing environments.
Online exhibition – Nanda/Hobbs Gallery – 28 September 2021
The inaugural WAMA Art Prize, Works on Paper attracted more than 500 entries from across Australia. The number and quality of artists who entered highlights the resonance that the theme of art and nature has within our creative community. In particular, the artworks reflected an acute awareness of the many environmental issues facing all of us.
Image credit: NYAPANYAPA YUNUPINGU Untitled (detail), 2018, 5861-18, paint pen on clear acetate, 86x 82cm. Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.
