“Rothwell, whose father was an industrial chemist and mother she describes as a ‘street botanist’, combines scientific inquiry with her artistic output, which includes sculpture, installations, drawings, and paintings.
News
Hong Kong Art Basel
Ames Yavuz, Booth 1D43, 28-30 March 2024
Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris
Caroline is the Creative Australia resident at Cité des Arts until April 2024
Ngununggula, Retford Park, Southern Highlands Regional Gallery, until 5 May 2024
The Belly and the Members, Yavuz Gallery
Karen Black, Cybele Cox, Sarah Drinan, Mehwish Iqbal, Solomon Kammer, Juz Kitson, Caroline Rothwell and Grace Wright
3–24 February 2024, Yavuz Gallery, Sydney
The exhibition takes its title from Aesop’s fable, in which the members of the body rebel against the belly, believing her idle and self-indulgent. The feet stand still, the hands won’t lift a finger, and the mouth refuses food. The members soon find that they can’t survive without the belly and repent their folly, acknowledging that each part of the body sustains the rest. The artists in this exhibition reimagine this figure as flesh, myth and landscape, embracing her as a container of multitudes. They shift well-worn perspectives on the body politic to reclaim the belly as a symbol of resilience and a seat of feminine power.
In her accompanying essay, celebrated playwright, novelist and screenwriter Suzie Miller reflects on The Belly and the Members as “a courageous and form-bending exploration of the human body. The body has been co-opted, admired, sold, touched, tasted, beaten, imprinted, raped, medicalised, spiritualised, colonised, traded, desired, used, killed, legislated against, denigrated, objectified, sexualised and de-sexualised. … We are confronted by the unexamined sense of our own form, made aware of how we have been trained to accept control and definition. This exhibition is a lens through which we see an exquisite new mode of self-determination.”
Gilbert Fellowship Lecture | Caroline Rothwell
University of Sydney, Sydney College of the Arts, 12 September 2023
Join us at Sydney College of the Arts to hear Gilbert Bequest Fellow Caroline Rothwell speak about her practice and illustrious career.
Image: Caroline Rothwell with her work ‘Lung’, 2021. Photo: Anna Kučera
Tokyo Gendai, Japan, Yavuz Gallery, 7-9 July 2023
In The Arms of Unconsciousness, Hazelhurst Arts Centre
Installation view, In the arms of unconsciousness: Women, feminism and the surreal, Hazelhurst Arts Centre, Photo: Silversalt Photography
In the arms of unconsciousness: Women, feminism and the surreal, is a cross generational exhibition featuring the work of 22 significant female Australian artists whose practices explore ideas of the surreal and feminism.
Featuring newly commissioned and recent works, including some which have not yet been seen by Australian audiences, the exhibition includes paintings, ceramics, photography, sculpture, video works, drawings and collage.
Sitting within a renewed global interest in women artists and Surrealism, this ambitious exhibition explores ideas of feminism and the surreal, proposing an intrinsic between the two, particularly in contemporary Australian art practice over the decades.
The artists in this exhibition work with elements of the surreal to explore, disrupt or challenge traditional representations of the female body and provide unique perspectives on personal and political issues which resonate today.
Artists include Del Kathryn Barton, Vivienne Binns, Pat Brassington, Louisa Chircop, Madeleine Kelly, Deborah Kelly, Juz Kitson, Lucy O’Doherty, Caroline Rothwell, Kaylene Whiskey, Jelena Telecki, Lynda Draper, Freya Jobbins, Jenny Orchard, Jill Orr, Patricia Piccinini, Julie Rrap, Honey Long & Prue Stent, Marikit Santiago, Anne Wallace and Amanda Williams.
What if we could remember the future?, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
What if we could remember the future? A solo show of new work by Caroline Rothwell, showing at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, until 1 April, 2023
Artificial, Evolution and Sustainable Future, Art Taipei
Exhibition, curated by Shen Bo-Cheng for ART TAIPEI, October 2022
“If one says that art and culture have the most profound influence on human thinking and value system, then art creation and art exhibitions play a role in the transformation of human thinking patterns. The exhibition Artificial, Evolution and Sustainable Future is a preliminary attempt and reflection on this new trend.
In this exhibition, an attempt is made through the works of artists to explore: the impact of human civilization on the natural environment; how science and technology may alert and highlight the current status of environmental problems; even further propose how artists imagine by using science and technology to assist, protect, and even find the possibility of mending nature.
…artist Caroline Rothwell tries to imagine a future where civilization and nature move forward hand in hand. The work Infinite Herbarium creates an endless herbarium in a virtual world through the participation of the audience, allowing scientific “plant collections” (or perhaps more accurately, human plundering) to preserve plant life in a more civilized manner. Technology and civilization are no longer the opposition to nature in this instant but are in sustainable coexistence…
Excerpt, exhibition text
Infinite Herbarium Morphisis, six channel video series showing in The Artificial, Evolution and Sustainable Future
Domitilla Dardi - Herbaria. Plants, modern herbaria and florilegiums
Published by 24 Hours Culture, Milan 2022
Pages 208, € 65, ISBN 9788866485988
A Plant in the Wrong Place
Counihan Gallery, Brunswick until 31 October, curated by Anna Dunnill
The popular definition of a weed is ‘a plant in the wrong place’. This exhibition questions and complicates our relationship with invasive plants. Viewers are invited to explore the resilience and usefulness of weeds, as well as to consider how we can better care for the environment. Weeds are also used as an analogy to probe ideas of identity and displacement.
Showcasing the work of seven artists, the exhibition features work by Anna Dunnill, Jenna Lee (Larrakia, Wardaman and Karajarri), Rebecca Mayo, Lisa Myeong-Joo, Caroline Rothwell, Tai Snaith and Katie West (Yindjibarndi)
BEYOND, Melbourne Art Fair
Caroline Rothwell’s installation in BEYOND at the 2022 Melbourne Art Fair, photograph: Andrew Curtis
Making its debut at Melbourne Art Fair, BEYOND harnesses the monumental exhibition spaces within the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre to present six large-scale installations and spatial interventions that respond to the theme djeembana/place. BEYOND is curated by independent curator and writer, Emily Cormack.
‘WAKING THE SLEEPING STATUES’
EMILY CORMACK
“The moving van turns the corner.
Arcades in the sun. Sleeping statues.
Red smokestacks; nostalgia for unknown horizons.” [1]
The unknowable essence of place described in this poem by painter Giorgio de Chirico is us. The pivoting, pirouetting truth of our Covid moment is disorienting and all we can do is feel for place, sense our surroundings. In us is the stillness of empty streets and sleeping statues. Life paused, bracing for news, pacing our small perimeters. Nostalgia for unknown horizons is our constant condition, as linear time fails to keep up with the whimsy of our locked-down, wandering minds.
For Melbourne Art Fair 2022: Beyond we have commissioned six sculptural installations, each of which turn to this strange stilled, cusping moment – dwelling on the no-place / some place that we are in. Working across media and style the works are offered up to the viewer, as sculpture, video, fabric, river reed and dance – inviting the viewer to wake with them, to begin anew, together.
Featuring new work by Matt Arbuckle, Maree Clarke, Sean Meilak, Nabilah Nordin, Caroline Rothwell and Sally Smart, each of the works question what this place is when we are without each other. In different ways the works draw us to one another – inviting physical proximity, wrapping us, inviting us to dance, sit or digitally interact, enveloping us and affecting us. For MAF’s Beyond 2022 the commissions seek a direct connection with the viewer, tapping onto our energy fields and inviting us to connect once again. Occupying ideas of djeembana – a Boonwurrung term for community, exchange, and meeting points, these works illuminate those moments when the individual meets the collective.
Presented by Tolarno Galleries
The Natural World, Mosman Art Gallery
Until 20 March 2022 at Mosman Art Gallery
Destination Sydney: The natural world presents the work of a select group of key Australian artists whose art practice has become synonymous with the natural world: Joan Ross, Fiona Lowry, Merran Esson (Manly Art Gallery & Museum), Janet Laurence, Caroline Rothwell, Robyn Stacey (Mosman Art Gallery), and Bronwyn Oliver, Juz Kitson and Jennifer Keeler-Milne (S.H. Ervin Gallery).
The third exhibition in a special series of collaborations between three Sydney public galleries, Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Mosman Art Gallery and the National Trust’s S. H. Ervin Gallery.
Sunday 6 March 2:00 PM Artist Caroline Rothwell is joined by curator, Katrina Cashman for an afternoon of discussion encompassing Rothwell’s practice and the works included in The natural world.
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Attendants (after Schongauer), is currently showing in the Grand Courts at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, photo Jenni Carter, AGNSW
“Attendants (after Schongauer) takes its cue from an early but influential engraving by German artist Martin Schongauer ‘The Temptation of Saint Anthony’ c1470s. This work depicts Saint Anthony in a state of calm while a group of devils claw and club his body, attempting to sabotage his pursuit of religious ascetism. Schongauer imagined these vicious creatures as fanciful hybrids with body parts amalgamated from different classes of animal – wings, horns, beaks, claws, scales and so on.
Rothwell’s ‘attendants’ follow in the image of Schongauer’s devils, mingling the grotesque and fantastic. However, her gathering of creatures is without an object of malice; perched on plinths (or suspended from above) among a grove of trees, they radiate a sinister but undirected energy. Hence they read as symbols – or perhaps symptoms – of a more general humanistic angst, perpetuated by the status quo of an increasingly unstable world: politically, environmentally, and economically.”
Know my Name, National Gallery of Australia
Scape, 2007, mobile, nickel-plated britannia metal, stainless steel, dimensions variable
Scape is currently showing in Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
The exhibition looks at moments in which women created new forms of art and cultural commentary and highlights creative and intellectual relationships between artists across time.
Curators: Deborah Hart, Head Curator, Australian Art and Elspeth Pitt, Curator, Australian Art with Yvette Dal Pozzo, Assistant Curator, Australian Art
Horizon, Hazelhurst Art Gallery
Horizon, Hazelhurst Regional Galleries
Sunday 21st November, 12pm Caroline Rothwell will be in conversation with Horizon exhibition curator, Carrie Kibbler about her exhibition, Horizon
Bloom Lab, Tolarno Galleries
Art Collector, Pull Focus
Pull Focus, Art Collector, Caroline Rothwell talking with Camilla Wagstaff, Editor
The National 2021, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
Lung, 2021, installation view, canvas, gypsum cement, stainless steel, paint, mixed media, image: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, photograph: Felicity Jenkins
The National: New Australian Art presents the latest ideas and forms in contemporary Australian art, curated across three of Sydney’s premier cultural institutions: the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. A 6-year initiative over 3 editions in 2017, 2019 and 2021, the curatorial vision for the exhibition represents a mix of emerging, mid-career and established Australian artists living here and abroad. New and commissioned works encompass a diverse range of mediums including painting, video, sculpture, installation, drawing and performance.
Thirteen artists consider diverse approaches to the environment, storytelling and inter-generational learning. Drawing on natural materials and processes, as well as found objects and detritus, they explore notions of planetary caretaking, and our relationship to place in an era of dramatic change.
Unseen physical forces – wind, gases, emissions – power some works, while others transform plant matter, kangaroo teeth, echidna quills and plastic waste into powerful statements. Women’s practice is central to The National 2021 at the MCA, explored through diasporic and familial histories, labour and learning, and wider mythological narratives. Symbiosis in nature is an enduring motif in the exhibition, demonstrating patterns of connection and the balance of all things in the natural world.
The National 2021: New Australian Art at the MCA is curated by Chief Curator Rachel Kent.
The Wilderness Journal, interview
Art Guide, Reclaiming Botanical Worlds
The Planthunter, interview with Georgina Reid
Caroline Rothwell’s Infinite Herbarium, The Planthunter, Issue #76, June 2021, Georgina Reid, Editor
“Caroline Rothwell explores the interface between culture, industrialisation and nature. Her work provokes important questions about what we choose to see and archive, and more importantly, what we don’t…”
Ocula Magazine, interview with Tessa Moldan
The Follies of Industrialisation, Ocula Magazine, March 2021
In Conversation with Tessa Moldan, Singapore
Attuned to the ‘contemporary conundrums’ that shape the world, Rothwell unpacks the past to consider the future, luring viewers in with opulent forms and colours. These decorative elements embody the absurdity of grandiose moments on the timeline of industrialisation. One such act includes geoengineering—the technological processes that intervene in the earth’s climate system to counteract the effects of climate change…”
Vault, Wins 2021 Ravenswood Women's Art Prize
Vault, 2020, acrylic on linen, 163 x 183 cm
Winner, Ravenswood Women’s Art Prize 2021
From Art Monthly:
Described by judges as ‘a poignant, beautiful and major work’, a painting that examines the historical idea of a wunderkammer (or cabinet of curiosities) for contemporary eyes has won the 2021 Ravenswood School for Girls Australian Women’s Art Prize, the country’s highest value art prize for female artists. Vault (2020) by Sydney-based Caroline Rothwell which was also a finalist in last year’s Sir John Sulman Prize, looks at what the artist has called ‘a Western disconnect from nature’ at a time that ‘a battle rages to recognise the value of traditional knowledge and the natural world’.
Infinite Herbarium panel discussion at The Calyx
In a recent ‘Live at The Calyx’ session, the panel discussed art, tech and botany and whether or not plant extinction has a PR problem. The conversation was had in the context of the Infinite Herbarium – an artwork created by Caroline Rothwell in partnership with Google Creative Lab.
Panelists are: Rachel Kent, Chief Curator, MCA; Jonathan Richards, Creative Lead, Google Creative Lab; Caroline Rothwell, John Siemon, Director of Horticulture at Botanic Gardens, Greater Sydney
Infinite Herbarium, collaboration with Google Creative Lab
Infinite Herbarium, Experiments with Google