Talitha Kennedy | Artist Demonstration

In celebration of upcoming exhibition, Intimacy, join artist, Talitha Kennedy, for an intimate conversation and demonstration of her artistic process as she hand-stitches small leather soft sculptures.

Drop in for a conversation with Kennedy and learn about the tools and techniques she uses to craft organic forms. Kennedy is keen to meet other artists and anyone interested in chatting about craft, plants and intimacy in art. 

• Members of the public – drop in any time between 10.00am - 12.00pm 
• Schools and groups – complete a school and group booking request form, consider applying for the RMOA x Haymans Bus Bursary

 

 

 

Talitha Kennedy 

"I lovingly craft my sculptures by hand-stitching leather and fleshing out with stuffing and wire. It’s a slow meditative practice that I make in my home studio, which is my safe place where my imagination is free and my hands play, to create something beautiful from what I see and feel of the natural world."

 

Talitha Kennedy is based in Melbourne/Naarm. Working in black leather soft sculpture, ink drawing on paper and installation, her process-driven practice considers the necessary destruction of things to make the new.

Her works embody an aesthetic of fecundity where creative forces are in eternal flux between the living and dying. Hands-on laborious methods and highly personal use of materials allow an encounter with the observed world as beings to engage with as a tactile encounter. The organic form – indeterminately evoking animal, plant or landscape – brings into question our cultural failure to know ourselves as part of the natural environment; the tactile engagement with the works provide a comfort device for our separation anxieties with nature.

Sculptures reflect on the relationships between the materials – leather specifically tanned for making gloves; the process and dexterous techniques – the reanimation of dead animal skin that has been industrialised for uses of human comfort and protection; and the subjects of gesture, touch and intimacy. Drawings are repetitive marks on paper where a skin of surfaces is woven by pen and ink. Intuitive stitch-like marks follow the wrinkles and slopes of crumpled paper conjuring things in flux such as decay, cobwebs or fleeting shadows.

 

 

 

Image: Talitha Kennedy Intimate Primordial Buds 2025 Leather, thread, polyester fibre, wire, MDF. Dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist. Credit: Quality Documentation. 

 

 

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