Francis Carmody

In its 34th year, curator Tim Riley Walsh brings together five artists who consider what it means to keep making things in a digital and post-industrial era. Francis Carmody (VIC/NSW), Alexandra Peters (VIC), Augusta Vinall Richardson (VIC), Keemon Williams (QLD) and Emmaline Zanelli (SA) respond to this question by demonstrating the insights that an intimate relationship with materials and production can offer. They also propose that, at a time when many people no longer see or understand how things are made, art can play a role in clarifying such processes. Through innovative approaches to sculpture and installation, the artists assert that making and engaging with art is a powerful means of reconnecting with the tangible in an increasingly abstract, digital world.

Working primarily within sculpture and installation, Carmody uses plants and animals as agents to explore complex production logics and imagined scenarios. Across these works, canine forms operate as “a kind of proxy” for people: figures both instinctive and strategic, capable of setting traps yet still vulnerable to falling into them. In Canine Trap II, Carmody expands this metaphor into a sculptural system that resembles a production line where rough forms are transformed into polished, desirable objects, echoing the seductive churn of commodity culture.

As part of the Canine Trap II, we blew a series of glass vessels integral to the work’s conceptual framework. These vessels were then mirrored by local makers the Varga Brothers, who worked through extensive experimentation to achieve an antique, burnished finish. The final surface holds a compelling tension: luminous and reflective, yet distressed – suggesting dual dichotomies of both value and erosion, and glamour and decay.