Anthea WILLIAMS
1.
Cyclone Crossing, 1995, Oil and enamel on bronze, 40 x 36 x 18 cm, Latrobe Regional Gallery Collection, purchased 1998.
2. Figure descending a staircase, 2020, Ceramic and adhesive, 20 x 13 x 15 cm, Courtesy of the artist.
3. Reclining Figure, 2019, Ceramic and adhesive, 17 x 26 x 18 cm, Courtesy of the artist.
4. Reclining Figure 3, 2019, Ceramic, cement and adhesive, 12 x 28 x 17 cm, Courtesy of the artist.
5. Standing Figure, 2020, Ceramic, cement, marble and adhesive, 27 x 12 x 20 cm, Courtesy of the artist.

 

Anthea WILLIAMS

 

Gippsland-based artist Anthea Williams has been a key figure in the local arts community for many years through her involvement with ARC Yinnar, as a technician at Latrobe Regional Gallery for some time and her positions lecturing in Visual Arts at Federation University, Churchill. Williams employs various processes in her sculptural practice, including working from moulds, welding metals and assemblages of multiple materials.

Williams has long been interested in the space between two and three-dimensionality. Her work Cyclone Crossing is an example from a body of work of welded steel, open-form sculptures, painted in some sections. The use of industrial steel provides a connection to the indus-try of Latrobe Valley. It has been manipulated into a composition much like an abstract gestural drawing but drawn in space. This multi-dimensional expression celebrates and aestheticises industrial material through textural markings and abstract forms, capturing a moment between fluidity and stasis.

The intersection of found objects and made forms also informs Anthea’s practice, as in her series of shattered ceramics. These works are carefully assembled from the artist’s ceramic rejections and found studio objects. The artworks in this series explore ideas around the real and perceived concepts of personal artistic failure and fragility. All the works can be read as standing or reclining figures, with titles paying homage to cubism. Cubist collage is further explored by the dissection of mass and planes all tenuously glued together.

Williams has been the recipient of prestigious awards throughout her career, including the Pollock-Krassner Foundation Grant in 2000. In addition, she has had numerous solo and group exhibitions across Victoria and beyond.