Ingleby are pleased to announce that Caroline Walker's Arts and Crafts (2023) has entered the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
To quote Justin Paton, Head Curator of International Art at AGNSW:
“In eloquent and often large-scale oil paintings, Scottish artist Caroline Walker reveals the importance of small things and celebrates the underappreciated work of women. The ‘small things’ in her 2024 exhibition Nurture included her own young son and daughter while being cared for and selflessly encouraged by nursery school teachers, health workers, and by the artist’s own mother, Janet. Arts and crafts is a particularly telling work from this series, constituting a kind of allegory of Walker’s richly observant and socially alert practice. Here a teacher from ‘Little bugs’, the nursery school attended by the artist’s daughter, sits with four pre-schoolers as they work on their art activities. We cannot see their creations closely but the amplitude and even grandeur of the composition makes it clear that Walker considers this moment deeply deserving. The light through the leaves above, the muddy ground and the movement of wind through chimes and streamers communicates a rich sense of place and of time in motion; these children are growing fast in a world where every day holds a multitude of challenges and discoveries. At the same time, the quiet attentiveness of the children, the gentle expression of the teacher, and the pyramidal stillness of the composition all imbue the scene with timelessness and universality. Walker, who herself continues and updates the tradition of painterly realism that emerges powerfully in the nineteenth century, here shows how art-making – though often construed as a solitary and individualistic male pursuit – begins in acts of sociable learning and sharing that have often been led by women.”
For more information, please visit the link below.
