WENDY TEAKEL

In her art practice, Wendy thinks as a sculptor and installation artist, one who internalises the spaces of the farm landscape. For her, the landscape is culturally encoded retaining the scars of earlier occupation with traces of fences and derelict buildings, signs of movement of stock and crop cultivation, as well as traces of erosion and animal tracks. In Wendy’s two-dimensional works, that is, her works on paper and plywood, she invariably adopts an aerial perspective, whereby she ‘maps’ the spaces of the land.

As part of her raison d’etre, Wendy incorporates into her artwork, literal elements from the landscape: soil, wire, grass seeds or rusty pieces of metal. This makes for a very tangible authenticity inherent to her works.

Wendy works across the disciplines of sculpture, drawing and painting to create artworks that explore the nature of place within the cultural landscape of farms. By exploring the relationships between shifting and permanent spaces that exist on farms, Wendy identifies specific places and creates their presence within the gallery space. The materials employed by Wendy are highly inventive as she collects tin, wire, grain or grasses from places she visits to incorporate into artworks. Wendy is also known for her use of pokerwork: pieces of fencing wire and farm detritus picked up along the way are heated and used to scorch patterns reminiscent of animal tracks or other farm activities onto plywood or paper surfaces.