HAYLEY BAHR

Hayley Bahr is currently completing the final year of her Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts) degree at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. Bahr's work has already been shown in various galleries such as The Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery in Fremantle, the Heritage Building in South Perth and Spectrum Gallery in Northbridge as well as in the Gomboc Gallery and Sculpture Park in Middle Swan. Bahr has also won numerous awards including the 2007 City of South Perth Peoples Choice Award and the 2007 Esperance Arts Society Print Award.

Below is a sample of her work, followed by her artist statement. Click on the images to give feedback or email me here.

Hayley Bahr (Artist), (2005) A Sheep Called Hope, Collograph on paper, 35cm by 49cm, Hayley Bahr

Hayley Bahr (Artist), (2005) A Sheep Called Hope, Collograph on paper, 35cm by 49cm, Hayley Bahr

Hayley Bahr (Artist), (2008) Untitled, Drypoint etching on bread, 38cm by 43cm, Hayley Bahr

Hayley Bahr (Artist), (2008) Self Portrait, Drypoint etching on bread, 30cm by 50cm, Hayley Bahr

Hayley Bahr (Artist), (2008) BE21, Mixed media print on bread, 30cm by 20cm, Hayley Bahr

Hayley Bahr (Artist), (2007) Seasoning, Mixed media print on paper, 74cm by 57cm, Hayley Bahr

Hayley Bahr (Artist), (2007) Untitled, Paper, old photographs, farm clothes and found objects. 550cm x 260cm x 130cm, Hayley Bahr

Hayley Bahr (Artist), (2007) Untitled, Paper, old photographs and found objects, 260cm by 260cm, Hayley Bahr

Hayley Bahr (Artist), (2008) Untitled, Wheat, old farm clothes and fence, 550cm by 260cm, Hayley Bahr

Hayley Bahr (Artist), (2008) Untitled, Wheat, old farm clothes and fence, 550cm by 260cm, Hayley Bahr

Artist Statement by Hayley Bahr

Most of my artwork attempts to discover my sense of ‘self’ through reflecting on my life experiences and connection to my family farm in the Western Australian Wheatbelt. This supports theorist Stuart Halls definition of the self as being, “points of identification, or stature, which are made within the discourses of history and culture” (“Gordon Bennett”, n.d., p.1). I grew up on a 5000 acre farm in the Wheatbelt. Here, I spent most of my time working outdoors with my father. During this time I observed and adopted a lot of my father’s interests, values and concerns which manifest in my artwork. For example, I adopted my father’s sense of connection to the land, his interest in farming and love of nature. From a more domestic perspective, my grandmother exposed me to her paintings, textile works and crafts at a very young age. This, along with my mother’s encouragement, engendered my interest in the visual arts.

My artwork celebrates my rural experiences and my family’s working relationship and connection to the land. More recently, this connection has been deepened by reading Peter Read’s book Belonging, and viewing Greg Pryor’s documentary, Grain of Night. Both explore non-Aboriginal Australians’ connection to the land. Belonging and Grain of Night have validated and inspired my own desire to work on these concepts as they have made obvious my sense of belonging to rural Australia. I often explore this working relationship with the land through combining everyday objects in my artwork, such as worn and battered farm cloths, wheat and bread. In my most recent work, I have grown wheat on and through my fathers working clothes. This illustrates their dependency on one another and is a metaphor for the connection shared between farmer and crop in the Wheatbelt.

Environmental concerns which affect rural Australia, such as salinity, are also explored in my artwork. When depicting this concern I often combine photography in my prints because it adds a more objective and raw element to my work. The prints I create often evoke a feeling of isolation. This extract from the poem Where the Dead Men Lie by Australian bush poet Barcroft Boake sums up the mood of my prints:

Where brown Summer and Death have mated -

That's where the dead men lie!

Loving with fiery lust unsated -

That's where the dead men lie!

Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely

Under the saltbush sparkling brightly;

Out where the wild dogs chorus nightly -

That's where the dead men lie! (Boake, 1971, p.1)

My artworks usually involve printmaking, conceived by transferring an inked image from one surface to paper. However, I have recently steered away from traditional ink on paper to a mixed media approach. My most recent work incorporates influences from my rural upbringing and includes etchings on bread and clothes. Australian artist Liz Decker also prints on non-traditional surfaces such as apples, dolls and orange peels, which in themselves convey meaning (“Liz Decker’s”, 2008). This technique has allowed me to experiment with printing on new materials and play with the symbolic potency of objects and products from my family farm. For example, I printed images of past family members, the landscape and farm life onto flattened bread which when dried took a 3D form. The extreme care required with handling the very fragile finished artwork can be interpreted as a metaphor to describe my valuing of history, the land and the declining rural lifestyle in a postmodern world.