Elizabeth Willing

Through the Mother 10 September 2019 – 18 January 2020
University of Queensland Art Museum

Elizabeth Willing‘s multi-sensory solo exhibition embraces how touch, taste and smell, inform our most poignant and powerful memories. The architecture of the space invites viewers to enter into a fragmented narrative that is pieced together by the artist through things that are familiar—a table, a stool, tea, wallpaper, a shed—but rendered strange by wax and bush, grease and hibiscus, valerian and patchouli.

Throughout the exhibition, tea is served for the audience. A mixture made by the artist and her mother, is a calming blend of valerian, passionflower, hibiscus, rooibos, and cinnamon; each ingredient possessing its own medicinal benefits, from the soothing of anxieties to the ceasing of inflammation. The artist has sought to give both physical and ephemeral form to memories of her mother, conveyed through smell, taste, and texture.  Tea served daily 10.00–11.00am, 2.30–3.30pm

Image: Elizabeth Willing Through the Mother 2019 installation. Photograph courtesy UQ Art Museum and Simon Woods