Katie Hayne, Demolition 1: Benjamin Offices Belconnen, 2023, Oil on board, 59.5cm x 42cm x 2cm. Image courtesy the artist.
Katie Hayne
Gallery 2
Friday 12 May - Sunday 4 June
Opening Thursday 11 May 2023, 6pm - 8pm
Dream City Demolition presents a series of new works by Katie Hayne, documenting Canberraโs changing urban places through painting and installation. In capturing Canberraโs dynamic landscape, Hayne draws attention to the materiality of places and questions the environmental impact of concrete and urban renewal. She questions what histories are embedded in the fabric of place and what are the environmental costs of gentrification? Hayne reflects on her practice below:
As I watched the demolition of the Benjamin Offices the most enduring feature became the endless piles of deconstructed concrete, twisted steel rebar and dust. The brutalist design of the buildings, identifiable by their huge concrete facades, was controversial. The complex had also previously been home to the Department of Immigration and possibly some of the most inequitable policy decisions in Australiaโs history. As I sat and watched the buildingโs erasure unfold, I sifted through my limited knowledge of these policies. I wondered what other histories these huge piles of concrete might hold. Environmentally, concrete has been labelled one of the most destructive materials on the planet.ยน However, despite the destruction and waste there was a sense of hope as the concrete was sifted and sorted ready to be recycled, possibly into a new structure or home. (Katie Hayne,2023)
Hayne is interested in how paintings can evoke stories, communicate resilience, and represent value through its long history and embedded labour.ยฒ Digital video as a medium is appealing for completely opposite reasons; its ephemerality and contemporaneity. By videoing herself painting en plein air Hayne brings these two mediums together. She states: โAs I build up layers of paint the building is torn down and I find myself complicit in a cyclical world driven by over-consumption and progress. At the same time, I want to embrace impermanence and find positive change in urban renewal โ to see it as rebuilding, rejuvenating and healingโ.
ยน Jonathan Watts, โConcrete: the most destructive material on Earthโ, The Guardian, 25 February 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/25/concrete-the-most-destructive-material-on-earth
ยฒ Isabelle Graw, The Love of Painting: Genealogy of a Success Medium (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2018), 10 and 25.
Click the link below to read a review by Con Boekel from City News on Dream City Demolition and its fellow exhibition Drift by Katherine White.
About the Artist
Katie Hayne is a Canberra-based artist working on Ngunnawal Country. She recently completed a Master of Philosophy in painting at the ANU and previously studied a Bachelor of Visual Arts at UNISA. Her work is held in private and public collections in Canberra. She is particularly interested in the everyday, waste, consumerism, and the environment.
