Deborah Sleeman’s art practice is inspired by the natural world and the island environment within which she lives and works. Her work is informed by formal study as well as a life experiencing a landscape traversed slowly, sailing and walking. Her sculptural forms are often ambiguous; a blurring of boundaries between topographical and living forms that explore the animate and inanimate in our world as integral rather than separate entities. This interface between opposites: the liminal, crespular, metamorphic, is a space where time expands and contracts, where the infinite resides. For Sleeman it is a constant challenge to imbue the built form with this invisibility.
The materials used are integral to the works, chosen to convey timelines and the elemental as well as notions of transience and permanence. Ghosts of their origins, the materials and imagery often reference our inheritance of the colonial landscape and the attendant antagonism and imposition that have created it. Social engagement has consistently been fundamental to Sleeman’s work as an artist and she has been engaged in numerous community art projects, workshops and residencies both on Kangaroo Island and elsewhere in Australia.
She has produced several outdoor sculptures as commissioned public artworks in granite, bronze and steel, but uses a plethora of materials such as cast glass, recycled metal and objects, drawing, printmaking and photographic techniques in her art practice that interrogate that interface of culture and nature and contribute to an implied history of a life in the landscape.
An award winning artist, Sleeman has exhibited widely in both solo and group exhibitions in SA and interstate including Sculpture Biennials such as the Palmer, Heysen and Lorne Biennials, Sculpture by the Sea and BOAA. Imagining the future through fragments of the past, connectedness to place and the deep resonance of the elements are the fuel for her work.
To get in touch please email debsleeman@bigpond.com
Image: Albatross, 2017. Mirrorstate. West Thebarton Gallery
Materials; pressed tin, lead, steel, ceramic, squid jags, copper. Dimensions; 1800 x 1000 x 700mm
I acknowledge the traditional and contemporary cultural connection of the Ngarrindjeri, Ramindjeri, Narrunga and Kaurna people to Kangaroo Island. I pay my respects to their Elders past present and emerging and recognise the deep spiritual attachment and ongoing relationship that Aboriginal people have to Country.
