Deborah Kelly

As a school student in 70s Melbourne, my primary exposure to culture was through the pages of books. I studied the European canon at a triple remove: as a girl; as an antipodean girl; as an antipodean girl who had never seen the paintings except as printed paper’s cheap approximation of European glory. For years I have obsessively collected discarded reference books from garage sales, charity shops and the sides of roads. They are the abandoned evidence of a colonial project casting the white European man as the only possible artist and his viewpoint as the standard by which all else is measured. In my works both solo and collaborative I am keen to explore, even to demonstrate, expanded realms of perspective and intent.