Guido Valdez (Vendetta for Love)

BACKGROUND Weaver draws on the aesthetics of modern art design and textiles to create sculptures that reveal the narrative potential of everyday objects and animal forms. She investigates colours, patterns and ornamentation that refer symbolically to the natural world - where colour is used to camouflage, attract, or to signify danger. Artists selected for Colourwheel "reflect on the revolution in colour that occurred in the modern age, when new technologies created new kinds of colour that changed the appearance of our world". In the context of this exhibition, Weaver asks, "How can synthetic colour present in contemporary textile fibre be incorporated as sculpture to suggest nature's deployment of camouflage; reimagining a Pacific Gull specimen as a fantastic transient space of metamorphosis?" CONTRIBUTION Exploiting the specimen's historic, scientific and cultural associations, Weaver employs traditional handcraft techniques to create a metaphoric 'skin' or costume directly over a taxidermy specimen, including its webbed feet. This innovative, technically sophisticated sculpture extends her investigation into the ways combinations of artificial colour, patterns, and materials; sensory experiences enable physical or psychological removes from a present location or time, reanimating the work with fantasy and imagination. SIGNIFICANCE Head curator of International Art AGNSW, Justin Paton curated Colourwheel. A yearlong exhibition at one of Australia's pre-eminent State Galleries, it features sculpture by Weaver alongside works by John Baldessari, Michael Craig-Martin, Kay Rosen, Eduardo Paolozzi, Joe Tilson, Sol LeWitt and Andy Warhol. In 2006 Weaver was invited to design the cover of Art & Australia magazine (now ARTAND). Guido Valdez (Vendetta for Love) is the outcome of that commission. The exhibition 'Colourwheel' is the first time the artwork; in it's primary intended form as sculpture, has been exhibited or submitted for ERA.