Anna Louise Richardson

Title

Anna Louise Richardson

Contributor

Anna Louise Richardson

Artist Statement

Anna Louise Richardson is an artist and freelance curator investigating rural Australian identity and associated mythologies. Richardson works primarily in charcoal and graphite on cement fibreboard, using a realistic approach, flattened perspective, cut-out shapes and manipulated scale to amplify the subject matter. Her artistic practice reveals ideas of intergenerational exchange, parenthood and signifiers of identity based on her experiences of life in rural Australia living and working on a multi-generation family farm.

The complexities of human relationships with the natural world and the intergenerational qualities of these relationships are driving themes throughout her practice. Richardson's work depicts animals as a recurring motif to examine shared values on the role of animals in culture, commerce and ecology and how these are shaped through different histories, storytelling and imagination.

Richardson shares a studio on the farm with her husband Abdul-Rahman Abdullah– a Malay/Australian Muslim artist whose sculptural practice draws on the narrative capacity of animals to explore the intersection of politics, cultural identity and the natural world. Their two daughters, Aziza and Althea are the seventh generation to grow up on the property.

Richardson holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Curtin University of Technology, Perth and has been a practicing artist since 2014. Primarily a visual artist, since having her first child she has also contracted as a freelance curator working with Australian art institutions, festivals and organisations.

In 2019 Richardson completed Aziza’s Zodiac (2018-19), a 12-panel artwork featuring one animal for every month of a year after the birth of her first daughter. The work, a yearlong project created for an exhibition designed for child audiences reflected Aziza's life, told through the animals around her. This was the start of a new direction for Richardson's practice and serves as a record of her daughter’s personal history on the farm and responds to her own evolving narrative of motherhood in a rural setting.

Her most recent work examines what domestic and familiar objects may tell us about our own histories, presents and futures. She has been drawing objects that reflect household hazards such as rat poison, knives and power cords, highlighting the proximity of danger present in everyday life, particularly those that underline parental worry. These works speak directly to our common sense of anxiety about danger, our collective fear of death, and our innate need to protect the ones we love.

Collection

Citation

Anna Louise Richardson, “Anna Louise Richardson,” Artist Parent Index , accessed March 28, 2024, https://www.artistparentindex.com/items/show/511.

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