Royal Commissions are increasingly seen as a powerful forum for truth-telling, providing an important public mechanism for the examination of difficult issues.
Based on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2012-2017) this seminar examines the role of art in responding to commissions of inquiry, and how it can provide a platform for ongoing conversations about what are often challenging and traumatic topics. It explores the artist/researcher’s approach to the use of a reparative aesthetic (an approach to art making designed to make gentle but powerful statements about shameful events), the artist as witness trauma that is not their own, and the use of beauty as a legitimate strategy or entry-point into violent, shameful and difficult topics.
Bio
Kerry Martin is a visual artist in the final stages of a creative practice PhD at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research. Her practice is motivated by the logic of a reparative aesthetic, an approach aimed to hold the viewer’s attention on the difficult subjects she explores. Martin works primarily with textile techniques. Her work focuses on manual methods, and she frequently employs the slow, repetitive process of hand stitching as a fundamental element of her work. She consistently examines questions relating to the human condition and areas of social injustice. She is interested in how beauty, text, the repetition of mark making, and the multiplicity of display can be an impactful form of bearing witness.
This research is supported and funded by an Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship.
This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to KerryMartin_Presentation.mp4