Eight plush wall sculptures are encased in synthetic fur as part of Kathy Temin's exhibition Wall Works (21 April–27 May 2023) at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.
Unified in a musky pink palette, the works are individually sewn, stuffed, and covered with a cuddly, consolatory fabric, challenging conventional tastes and engaging with family history as a site for personal and collective remembering.
In Wall Works, Temin invokes notions of suburbia and interior design, structured around tensions between the familiar and strange, the organic and artificial, the literal and metaphorical, and the solemn and kitsch.
Temin's furry creatures vary in size, some resting their paws on the gallery floor below.
In Wall Work: Open Rectangle (2023), four tails hang beneath a woven assemblage of blush-coloured fur. Are we in the presence of a shapeshifting critter? Or is Temin simply poking fun at us with her kitsch craft?
The Melbourne-based artist first gained widespread recognition for her performance project Pet Corner at MoMA PS1 in 1998, in which she recruited 14 actors who had never seen koalas and challenged them to mate like the animal.
Other projects include a bedroom shrine for pop star Kylie Minogue and an installation of mock tombs for deceased pets.
