Artist Statement
Louise Tate is a painter and writer whose practice explores personal, historical and literary narratives of women, care, gardening as activism, and Australian identity. She is specifically interested in how stories of womanhood and the complexities of national identity can transcend cloudy histories. Weaving the factual with the fictional, Louise uses her practice as a way to offer up possibilities for new ways of being in the world, all the while acknowledging the role that painting has played throughout history in dictating what is or is not remembered and valued.
Recent work 'A bronze weapon smelling of honey' takes its name from the poem 'Banksia' by Australian poet Kate Llewellyn. In this work the figure of the artist stands amongst the scene of a childhood home, one foot in the present and one in the past. She cradles a banksia, a native wildflower that potentially faces the threat of a changing climate. In an ever-shifting landscape of history, memory and an uncertain future climate, what will remain? Bodies (animal, plant, and mineral) seem infallible but are transient. It is their actions that remain. This work is a meditation on how to use our weapons (our hands, words and thoughts) to meaningfully inhabit the land that we live on.
