Anita Larkin

Anita Larkin received a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Sydney College of The Arts in 1993, and has since exhibited extensively within Australia and internationally. She is represented by Defiance Gallery in Newtown, Sydney. (www.defiancegallery.com)

In 1997 her first solo show Bodily Felt was held at Project Contemporary Art Space in Wollongong consisting of a series of life-size casts of human figurative sculptures in paper and felt.

Feltmaking still informs a large part of Larkin’s art practice, a craft she has taught and given lectures about since 1994, and has recently formed The Illawarra Feltmakers, who meet twice a month in Shellharbour. She continues to teach workshops in feltmaking and sculpture to interested groups.

Invited to the World Meeting of Felt Artists in Hungary in 2004, Larkin has also traveled to Turkey to learn their methods of feltmaking.  Intrigued by the sculptural nature of felt she has transformed the material into strange and innovative forms, particularly hats. The felt she makes by hand using the hair of various sheep, in much the same way as nomadic cultures have done for thousands of years. It is an intriguing material that is both primitive yet industrial, and intensely tactile.

Since she was a small child Larkin has collected and assembled found objects, finding the hidden story inside abandoned things to often be the beginning of a new work. These objects bring a sense of history, intrigue and familiarity to the sculpture. Larkin's eclectic found object sculptures exude a wry sense of humour, belying a more serious investigation into the peculiarities of humanity. Her intriguing works often explore issues of fate and self-will, and the uneasy co-existence of the body with the psychological self. 

Investigating the role of function and dysfunction within sculpture, Larkin creates strange post-apocalyptic 'Tools for forgotten purposes' using discarded industrial and domestic objects. She is intrigued by the malleable boundary lying between an artifact, a toy and a sculpture, and thereby produces works that suggest play, infer movement, and are finely crafted to appear as if they are relics from some oddball post apocalyptic civilization.

Contact Anita Larkin for artist lectures, workshops, and commissions.