Karla Dickens: Wonder Cupboards

Karla Dickens is a Wiradjuri artist that creates artworks made of found objects. Her artworks tell stories that are important to her, and also to society.

Karla uses collage to create her artworks, a technique of bringing together items that were intended for a different purpose to create a new idea.

Using items such as boomerangs, teeth, and a bird cage, as well as wooden carvings that depict stereotypes of Aboriginal people, the works are a way for the artist to reflect on her experience as an Aboriginal person, a mother and an activist. Within this series there are moments of humour, and moments of sadness.

All the works are new and have been made specially for our Wonder Cupboards. Behind each door is an invitation to reflect on important ideas, using playful techniques and images.

About the Artist

Karla is Wiradjuri, her parents are from Mascot, Sydney. Karla Dickens was born in Sydney in 1967; the Year of the Referendum, that gave Aboriginal people human status within the nation called Australia. A double dawn for Aboriginal people; a major national political and social shift, and an innocent new born seemingly as yet without any connection to her history and Aboriginal heritage. As she tells, the process of moving from childhood to the present was a colourful and, at times, destructive journey of self discovery. Ironically and literally a truly dark but noble ‘Dickensian’ life. In the 1970s feminists spoke of being three times discriminated against – being Aboriginal, being a woman, and being gay. Karla’s Aboriginality and sexuality do profoundly inform her work – yet her insight and breadth of artistic practice both embraces the notion of identity politics deeply and yet works with universal human experiences. Her work truly fosters an intra and cross cultural dialogue through the forum of contemporary art.