LOUISE HASELTON
b. 1960
Lives and works in Adelaide, Australia
"Louise Haselton produces sculptures and installations in which the formal placement of objects are contrasted with an element of randomness. Traditional precision craft techniques such as casting might be positioned within an assemblage of found objects. Following a Helpmann Academy residency at Sanskriti Kendra, Delhi, India, 2005, Louise has been making sculptural works using materials gleaned from the world around her."
(Dr Mary Knights, 2012)
Louise Haselton makes sculptural works using materials gleaned from the world around her. In 2002 Haselton completed a Masters of Visual Arts (Sculpture) by research at RMIT University, Melbourne and in 2005 undertook a residency at Sanskriti Kendra, Delhi, India. Haselton held solo exhibitions, in 2011 at The Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, in 2013 at Greenaway Art Gallery and in 2014 at The Australian Experimental Art Foundation. In 2015 Haselton participated in do it adelaide, at The Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, when she enacted instructions by Alison Knowles and was included in the 2016 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Magic Object at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Since 2003 she has been a lecturer in The School of Art, Architecture and Design, University of South Australia.
LIKE CURES LIKE
SAMSTAG MUSEUM / 2019
'The expression like cures like borrows from Hippocrates’s Law of Similars (in contemporary parlance it has strong associations with the practice of homeopathy) and refers to the idea that a little of what causes unease could in fact lead to balance. It is a neat reference to the way in which Haselton builds her works but the significance of it as an exhibition title extends beyond literal interpretation. Its palindromic nature is a clue to Haselton’s democratic and wide-ranging material consideration. An abiding fascination with language and the way in which it can be broken down into component parts, reconstructed and folded, stems from Haselton’s early tertiary studies in English literature, an interest that transcends the page. For her, even the conceptual has form—language is every bit as structural as the stones, shells and textiles that compose her physical sculptures.'
-Gillian Brown
IN CAHOOTS
FREMANTLE ART CENTRE / 2017
In Cahoots: artists collaborate across Country is an expansive exhibition of new work taking over Fremantle Art Centre's galleries. The works are the result of 18 months of artists’ residencies in remote and regional Aboriginal art centres across Australia.
Artists from six key Aboriginal art centres have invited leading independent artists – both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal – from around the country to work with them. The resulting collaborative artworks are significant, striking and bold in their inventive use of materials.
Featuring sculptural works, installations and films drawing together the ideas of artists from diverse backgrounds, In Cahoots presents these fascinating, potent collaborations happening across Country today.
Louise Haselton collaborated with Papulankutja Artists (WA): Lynette Brown, Nora Davidson, Pamela Hogan, Freda Lane, Angilyiya Mitchell, Anawari Mitchell and Jennifer Mitchell
MAGIC OBJECT / 2016
Materials possess an intrinsic spirit or energy for Adelaide artist Louise Haselton. This idea of animism, or the belief that inanimate objects are indeed conscious, allows for Haselton’s works of art to direct their own evolution. The artist confirms that she will sit ‘in the studio with them as they move around, group themselves, rearrange and settle into comfortable situations’. Acknowledging this extraordinary power, Haselton’s contributions to Magic Object, of perspex and concrete vitrine-like sculptures, have been carefully selected and unified as if they have naturally incarnated themselves.
Gemma Weston writes in her catalogue essay that Haselton’s ‘process of sculpting favours activation over creation; she is not a source of ‘animation’ but instead heightens the innate communicative powers of materials by alteration or by introducing one material to another.’ By witnessing and connecting the divine essence and materiality of each object, Haselton’s works are endowed with a physical presence otherwise unseen.
Louise Haselton’s sculptures feature in Gallery 22 at the Art Gallery of South Australia during Magic Object.
DO IT / 2015
Conceived by European curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and managed by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, do it (adelaide) will be the latest incarnation of this global art project.
do it began in Paris in 1993 as a result of a discussion between Obrist and artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier about how to make exhibitions flexible and open-ended. Would an artist’s work be transformed if others made the artwork?
From this starting point, 12 artists supplied instructions which were then published and distributed internationally. Soon afterwards, do it exhibitions were being realised all over the world. New instructions were added for each incarnation, so that today nearly 400 artists have contributed instructions to the ever-evolving project, offering vast creative possibilities for the participants who enact them. This archive includes instructions from artists such as Yoko Ono, Louise Bourgeois, Sol LeWitt, Liam Gillick, Tino Sehgal and Tracey Emin.
do it (adelaide) is an opportunity for the Samstag Museum to reach out to the Adelaide community: Museum visitors, students, musicians, local emerging and established artists, designers and Museum staff will collaborate on this ambitious project during our city’s vibrant festival period.
OUTSIDES
AUSTRALIAN EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION / 2014
Louise’s sculpture practice is increasingly driven by an interest in the way that materials around us, both manufactured and natural, can be experienced as simultaneously dead and alive. She gathers, alters, combines and repositions commonplace materials and objects, ‘activating’ them to draw attention to their deeper psychological potential. Her sculptural assemblages explore bodily and sensory responses to unexpected arrangements of things, their precision and physical tensions.
/ 2013
“Louise Haselton produces sculptures and installations in which the formal placement of objects are contrasted with an element of randomness. Traditional precision craft techniques such as casting might be positioned within an assemblage of found objects. Following a Helpmann Academy residency at Sanskriti Kendra, Delhi, India, 2005, Louise has been making sculptural works using materials gleaned from the world around her.“
WAITING ROOM
AUSTRALIAN EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION / 2013
Recently I have been wandering around my neighbourhood, slowly gathering dead and decaying plant material. This organic detritus will be combined with various materials to form the basis of a series of short-lived sculptural arrangements. Reminiscent of the Japanese tradition of ikebana, a highly structured form of floral arranging, considered to be calming for both creator and viewer, these works will be made in contemplative silence.
ERRAND WORKSHOP
CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE OF SA / 2011
CACSA PROJECTS #6 presents Errand Workshop, the major solo exhibition by local artist and educator Louise Haselton. This ongoing SALA Festival presentation builds on the CACSA’s commitment to presenting the best South Australian contemporary visual arts practice, continuing on from last year’s highly successful multi-site project CACSA CONTEMPORARY 2010: THE NEW NEW.
Louise Haselton’s predominately sculptural practice brings together unexpected and unusual combinations of everyday and found objects, exploring the connections between seemingly disparate materialities. The artist reclaims and re-presents materials to explore the boundaries of taste and kitsch, especially in relation to the feminine. More recently Haselton’s practice has revealed an interest in animism—the belief that inanimate objects have the capacity to generate a force or energy—through interaction between materials, forms and surfaces. Of her work Haselton has said, “My practice is one that values things unnoticved, the makeshift, slipshod, cobbled together. It is one that looks for a way to see beauty in the unkempt, to redeem the unworthy. I like to play in a space that can provoke attraction, fascination, repulsion.”
MISCELLANEOUS
