SYDNEY.- Direct from her major Campbelltown Art Centre exhibition, Talismans for Unsettled Times, presented as part of The National 4: Australian Art Now, Lynda Draper shares an extended new body of ethereal ceramic sculptures in a new solo show inspired by memories of the magical family roadtrips of her childhood, DRIFTING MOON.

A celebration of the curiosity and imagination of youth, DRIFTING MOON invites audiences to physically experience Draper’s dreamscapes on view since Saturday 26 August, at Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney.

On the eve of her father’s ninetieth birthday Lynda Draper began to reflect upon childhood memories of travelling through the Australian landscape, and the influence of this experience on her art practice.

From suburban Sydney to snow-tipped peaks, red deserts, coral-rich coastlines and tropical rainforests, Draper’s family would drive all night by the light of a drifting moon to reach their destination, revelling in the discoveries to come, the promise of adventure.

To this day, she remembers the thrill of anticipation in the lead-up to these journeys lovingly crafted by her dad – a schoolteacher who never missed an opportunity to encourage their interest and curiosity.

She recalls touching mineral deposits transformed, as if by magic, into luminous thunder eggs. In caves, the slippery prongs of stalagmites and stalactites. Along the highway, colossal roadside monuments of lobster, pineapple, prawn, mango, koala, banana, guitar. And quirky local museums, many now long gone, such as Currumbin’s Santa Land and Tewantin’s House of Bottles.

In DRIFTING MOON, the artist invites us to engage with Australia of the 1960s and 70s, in a series of works inspired by her early childhood reveries.

As Jaime Tsai writes in Sullivan+Strumpf Magazine (June 2023), “The stems of Draper’s hand-pinched and pulled Paperclay evoke the interlaced tendrils of a rainforest canopy, or equally, the uncanny, waxen corporeality of stalactites. The vivid baubles that seem to float amongst these tendrils suggest the flash of tropical fish as they weave between coral reefs and seaweed, or oysters and anemone nourished by tides.”

Allusions to natural phenomena are, Tsai notes, “Fragmentary and ephemeral, passing in and out of focus like a mirage”. In this sense she says, “They are like childhood memories: oneiric and too slippery to grasp for more than a moment, and yet robust enough to be forever impressed in one’s mind. I suspect this is why the evocative nature of memory is so suited to her ceramics, which are simultaneously fragile and resilient, porous to myriad associations and water-tight vessels of meaning.”

One of Australia’s most respected contemporary artists working in the ceramics field, Lynda Draper is known to consistently push the technical limits and conventional aesthetics of the medium.

Created by a combination of pinching and coiling hand building techniques, her skeletal structures evolve intuitively, each part gradually cultivating the connective tissue of the work. Often towering into the air, they appear ethereal in nature, yet are instilled with the permanence and resilience of fired clay.

Sullivan+Strumpf Sydney
Lynda Draper: DRIFTING MOON
August 24th, 2023 - September 16th, 2023