Karen Black’s work I Will Shade You From The World (2024) is included in the group exhibition New South: Recent painting from Southern Australia at the Hazelhurst Arts Centre, NSW. Conceived as a biennial program celebrating excellence and diversity in Australian painting, New South showcases the work and stories of a diverse group of painters from Southern Australia. They represent varied artistic communities in this undefined region.
I Will Shade You From the World is a painting about the conditions of compassion, care and renewal. As the title suggests, it inhabits the instinctual desire to protect those we love from terror, both real and imagined. Like many of Black’s paintings, the work is set in an ambiguous landscape both inside and outside. A large tree takes up much of the canvas while the skirting board of a room appears on the right-hand side, creating tension between what we think we see and what the artist wants us to see. Ever mutable, boundaries are not only blurred but internationally transgressed.
New South: Recent painting from Southern Australia
Hazelhurst Arts Centre, NSW
6 July – 8 September 2024