Beatrice Buckland-Willis
Beatrice Buckland-Willis
Website: https://www.beabuckland-willis.com/
Instagram: @beadoesntknowwhatshesdoing
Bio: Beatrice Buckland-Willis is a Sydney based artist, with a passion for all things print. In 2020 she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School (AUS), majoring in Printmaking. Much of her work utilises traditional print processes such as relief, intaglio, monotyping and screen.
As a young artist experiencing chronic pain issues, Buckland-Willis is concerned with the representation of female pain and subverting ideas of the ‘normal vs. abnormal’ body. Regularly playing with satire and parody, she wishes to break down the idea that art must be serious to be taken seriously.
Her practice is multi-disciplinary, combining traditional print processes with digital technologies, analog photography and installation - often employing collage and found images. Buckland-Willis is passionate about supporting women in print and has organised and curated exhibitions as a part of the "Wasteland Series" which are focused on subverting tropes of the suburban experience through the female gaze.
Artist Statement: The "Construct" series explores themes surrounding chronic pain, and specifically, the challenges facing female-identifying individuals and members of the queer community in relation to the dismissal of pain and illness. Playing with construction imagery sourced from photographic ventures around Sydney's ever-evolving inner west, the artist has created a series of repetitive geometric patterns which overlap and intertwine into themselves.
These patterns are reminiscent of the scaffolding source material; however, they also speak to surgical intervention and the healing body. The bold black and white graphic linework is symbolic of the interplay between the interior and exterior of the body, as breached through the surgical process. Having undergone significant spinal surgery as a child, the artist is interested in the way metallic orthopaedic implants (screws, rods and hooks) have a similar function in both the re-constructed body and scaffolding in the construction of a building.