About the artist
Born in 1968 in Sydney, Kathy Temin began her tertiary Studies in art at Prahran College of Advanced Education, followed by a Bachelor's degree and Master of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of Art. Coming into prominence in the 1990s with works hovering between painting and sculpture, art and craft, abstraction and figuration, Temin's signature unusual mediums challenge the conventions of taste and art. Temin's work often responds to and engages with private and collective memory relating to suburban and domestic icons and imagery as well as art history, local history as well as her Jewish heritage, including narratives of persecution and displacement.
A major solo exhibition entitled 'Kathy Temin' was held at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, in 2009.
About the artwork
Garden Islands is a collaboration between City of Stonnington and Fridcorp – Lilli Building
Garden Islands draws on themes that are prominent in Kathy Temin's work which include memory, history, loss, childhood, protection and optimism. The pillar forms are designed to be trees, creating an instant artificial environment, acting as a miniature garden assembly kit. They reference the manicured trees that compliment suburban homes.
The construction of a 'ready-made' garden operates as a signifier of somewhere else, asking the audience to draw on our remembrances of the 'real' objects to respond emotionally. These 'trees' are substitutes for natural habitats, and Garden Islands addresses ideas of our relationship to them through the urban and natural environments. The trees in this proposal create an instant artificial environment, acting as a miniature garden assembly kit. Substitutes for natural habitats, easily consumable, without ever changing shape, needing pruning or watering, the sculptural garden is the ultimate cultivated environment. The 'trees' are designed to be humorous, juxtaposing our everyday experience of the built world.
Kathy Temin's work engages with craft activities, toys and games from adolescence and also references those themes in her work. The look of the soft toy comes into play in Garden Islands in their soft, round shape.