Anna Horne COLOUR ME SOFT

9 February to 11 March 2023

 Artist Statement

Colour me soft is an exhibition of sculptures by Anna Horne, a visual artist living and working on Kaurna land. Horne’s practice is process driven, examining the order of functional materials within the context of contemporary sculpture. Employing methods of casting and assemblage, using structural materials such as concrete and metal, she creates sculptures embodying balance and imbalance, softness and hardness, and lightness and heaviness; playing with contradictory visual ideas.

About the body of work, Anna Horne shares: "Colour me soft continues my interest in manufactured materials that reference our built environment and embody contradictory states of balance and imbalance, softness and hardness. Using concrete, wire, packaging, spray paint, aluminium and rope, this body of work plays with the aesthetics and materials of the built world. Through these elements I explore the human desire to build and create stability, querying the need to make things last ‘forever’ and maintain permanency despite the inevitability of change.

Using a signature method of sewing flexible moulds from fabric in which to cast concrete I attempt to capture the process created by gravity. The resulting cast is solidified or caught in 'action' and appears droopy and soft as it interacts with steel frames and grids. These two elements, the steel frames and cast objects, result in sculptures that appear both heavy and unbreakable yet also appear unstable and fragile.

This work also proposes softness as an emotion or condition; bright contrasting colours often sit playfully against industrial surfaces, or colour is used to ‘cover up’ and hide anything falling apart. Through these sculptures I examine the limits of common-place materials, transforming them into unexpected forms and assemblages."

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This exhibition is supported by Arts South Australia through their Projects Grant. This exhibition has also been supported by Adelaide Central School of Art and Scammells Auctioneers & Appraisers through their Major Grant.