A Little Too Much
Tara Denny
24 Apr–18 May 2024
A little too much is composed of how we wear our love for another. The work examines feminist economies of writing, reading, and sculpture practices. Intimate inscriptions of desire between lovers. Worn in like a jewel on your skin. Shifting the needs between the external and the internal voice, asking who is the author as she creates an entanglement with Sappho.
To let the light in through dirt, she watched it crumble,
bones of glory,
Pouring into darkness,
Some onlookers wanted to see the detail of the floral lace wrap around which cost less than 20 dollars — which was second hand,
naturally — Soaked in dirt — from the bottom of the pile,
It was well — and splendid — an ancient dress, of times and oh what glory,
Covered in flowers, all different,
Old and dirty it was, ravaged beauty.
Brushing off the dirt of the past she saw it fit,
She was convinced the blush colour was for the night,
A slip dress, to reclaim her story,
She was a wanderer, some say adrift, always looking for flowers (insert: love by day)
Ripple by ripple, she goes,
She poses—
She was an object of their desire,
Framed by a locket, she opts out.
Barely able to eat berries from the vine, sucking on their bitterness, spits out the seeds...
Vulgarity at last, the virtue she is now granted,
Smokey for the tongue.
She holds her slender fingers while she muses about perfume—
She notes — a perfume: a type of musk she can recall in the hallway,
She describes it as well rounded…
I look around,
I look on to the clothes wrapped beside her bare legs, she passes with the strongest scent of jasmine.
The only scent is grounded in versions of sweet notes of reality.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Tara Denny, (Naarm/ Melbourne) is a sculptor working with bronze, aluminium, wax and the thrifted to materialise her own personal mythologies. Denny's practice uses feminist methodologies to resist the cultural erasure of women’s work, cementing entropic experiences of love and the bittersweet pull of fantastical realities into objects of great permanence. Evoking long traditions of oral histories passed between women, the archaic materials used in her practice act as a tribute to the latent unknowability of feminine experience, suggesting wide rifts of loss and amnesia. Works arrive already broken into fragments and ripe with decay, as though resurfacing from a fallen time to finally encounter the public’s gaze.
Current: Gertrude Contemporary Studio Residency Program, 2024-25. She graduated in (2022) at the Victorian College of Fine Arts, Melbourne University (Honours). Recent solo shows include: AirSpace, Sydney, (2023); Felt Space, Adelaide (2023); Melbourne’s cultural event ‘Open House’, Melbourne (2022); Cathedral Cabinet, Melbourne (2022); Platform Arts (Geelong), (2022); George Paton Gallery, Melbourne (2022). Recent group shows include: Greenhouse Offsite, Melbourne, (2023); The Turning, an exchange between Lilac City Studio (Gadigal) Sydney and Blindside, Melbourne (Naarm) hosted by Schmick Contemporary, Sydney (2023); and ‘All Worlds Are Flat’, Blindside (2021).