Contact: beck@beckwheeler.net
About Beck:
Beck Wheeler studied Visual Arts in New Zealand before moving to Australia in 2000. Since setting up an arts practise in Melbourne, Beck has established herself as a multi-disciplinary artist. She combines toy making, textile and woodworking techniques to produce sculptures. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited in Melbourne, Spain, UK, USA and Canada. Her illustrations have made it into the 2009 Best of British Illustration AOI annual touring exhibition and publication. And her toy range Kissy Kissy Toys has seen her design toys for musician Beck (for The Information album).
Beck is currently living and working in Piha, New Zealand. Her next exhibition titled The Swanndries Guys opens on October 22nd 2010 at High Seas Gallery Ground Floor, Theta Building, 12 Beresford Square, Auckland.
Beck Talks about her art:
I remember getting my own room for the first time as a kid. I said goodbye to my little sister and climbed the stairs to my new attic room. “I’m going to miss the faces in the wallpaper” I remember saying as I packed up my stuff and carried it upstairs.
The wallpaper was a blue floral design made up flowers, buds and leaves woven together with vines. Over the years spent in that room my imagination had turned buds and flowers into eyes and noses, the vines had become hair. The faces had become characters. There was a mummy and a daddy and three little baby flower people. I imagined where they lived, how they interacted and what they liked and disliked.
I seek to stay in touch with my childhood imagination. Over the years I have done a number of drawing workshops and toy making workshops with children and young people and am constantly inspired by the way children draw, colour-in and talk about what they are drawing.
My artwork is driven by character, texture, pattern, shape and colour. Whether I am painting, drawing, sculpting or animating I always start with a character and a story. Characters can emerge from a mark or a stain on the floor, a pattern on the trunk of a tree or a person or animal I meet.
While I was based in Melbourne my characters were often based on people I met and conversation I overheard on trams. Davo the Man-Bunny was a character I designed after a friend got beaten up in the city for ‘being a poof’ and ‘wearing tight jeans’. Davo became a parody of the attacker, a playful look at the stereotype of a homophobic/sexist/racist Ozzie. The Mother of all Evils was a character I designed for my 2008 solo show Hey, Hey Which Way. In the lead up to designing The Mother of all Evils I asked people I met what they thought happened when you die? where do you go? what is heaven? and what is hell? The Mother of all Evils was designed around the answers I received about hell and the devil. My work is not meant to be scary or gloomy, I seek to balance scary and cute, good and evil, bright and dark, male and female, rural and urban. I seek to create work that neutralises opposites.
I am currently based in Piha, New Zealand. Since returning to New Zealand last year I have been overwhelmed by the textures within nature here. Coming from Australia, after seeing the effects of drought and fire, New Zealand’s landscape is bursting with life, colour and texture. The house I live in is being swallowed up by bush on all sides. We get all kinds of birdlife and all kinds of insects setting up residence in our house and garden. The patterns and texture of nature are things that are becoming more and more apparent in my work.
I am currently experimenting with digital media and bringing painting, sculpture and digital media together through installation. The Swanndries Guys is the title of my next exhibition. The Swanndries Guys are a series of humanoid characters based on the quintessential kiwi bushman/bushwoman. They live in a world of colour, texture and abstraction. A world where the hills move and the people stay still. A world where when the sky is angry it thunders and when the sea is sad it rains.
I was born in Hamburg, Germany and moved to England and then New Zealand when I was a toddler. Throughout my childhood my dad read me stories from European folklore. Tales that were full of mystery, adventure and danger. Tales where the lines between good and evil were sometimes blurred. When I went to school I learnt the Maori legend about Maui and how he pulled Te Ika a Maui (the north island of New Zealand) out of the ocean with his magic fishhook. When living in Australia I learnt about aboriginal art, Dreamtime and dot painting.
I am inspired by the oral tradition of folklore and the passing down of stories from generation to generation. I like how these stories can vary slightly depending on who is the storyteller. When I create art I create my own story. When people see my work I want them to create their own story about why the work is created, what the characters are and how they relate to each other.
Exhibition List:
Selected Solo Shows
2009 Totally Totem
Exhibition of sculptural works Craft Victoria, Flinders Lane, Melbourne, AUST
2008 Hey, Hey, Which Way?
Exhibition of Works on Paper /Installation UBER, St Kilda, VIC, AUST
2007 Get Stuffed
Installation of soft sculpture Melbourne Fringe Festival Hub, VIC, AUST
2006 The Toy Shop Sale
Installation of soft sculpture and textiles Encounter, Craft Victoria, VIC, AUST
2005 ‘If I told you that I loved you would you scratch me on the ear?’
Exhibition of paintings Hudsons, Balaclava, VIC, AUST
Selected Group Shows
2010
Land of the Rising Stars The Pink Cow, Shibuya, Japan
2008
Head Case Sofitel, Melbourne, VIC, AUST
Icon5 Roadshow The Roosevelt Hotel, NewYork, USA
Forty Thieves Gorker Gallery, Melbourne, VIC, AUST
2007
Hung By The Sticky Bits Until Never Gallery, Melbourne, VIC, AUST
Gas projects Sense Assault Sydney, NSW, AUST
Plastic Pimps Grand Central Records, Melbourne,VIC, AUST
Latex For Fun Vallery Gallery, Barcelona, Spain
2006
Blame it on the Rain Misty Bar, Hosier Lane, VIC, AUST
Anti Mascot Project Platform 2, Flinders St Station, VIC, AUST
2005
Stuffed This Is Not Art Festival, NSW, AUST
Plush Rush Courtland Avenue, Ohio, USA
Plush You Schmancy, Seattle, USA
Beat the Pony Outskirts Gallery, Fitzroy, VIC, AUST
2004
Whitewall Westspace, Melbourne, VIC, AUST
Performance Victoria Arts Centre,VIC, AUST
Reviews
Dumbo Feather mag (issue 18): Review of 2008 Hey Hey Which Way? solo exhibition at Uber Gallery in Melbourne.
Design Quarterly named Beck Wheeler in the Top Ten Forces and Faces in Australian Design (Vol. 29)
Urbis Magazine profiled Beck in their ’small things considered’ (issue 42)
Artwork Reviews:
Goodweekend (The Age, AUST), Inside Design review(AUST) , Preveiw Magazine (The Age, AUST), Make Magazine (USA), MX Magazine (AUST) , IdN Design Review (Hong Kong) , STU (AUST), Plush Toys/ Lark Books (USA), Chik Magazine (AUST), Sydney Morning Hearld (AUST), Dumbo Feather (AUST), Australian Art Review (AUST), Dumbo Feather (AUST)