Daylesford Rotary Art Show this year will be judged by Dr Karen Annett-Thomas. Dr Annett-Thomas is the Director of the La Trobe Art Institute.
Karen has held numerous roles there and across La Trobe University over the years, including Assistant Director, Public Programs Coordinator, sessional lecturer, postgraduate supervisor and ITAS tutor. In these positions she has been instrumental in building partnerships across the community and cultural sectors, establishing the Institute’s residency program, and nurturing relationships with key stakeholders both within the University and beyond. She holds a PhD from La Trobe University, and her ongoing practice as a working artist strongly informs her inclusive approach to learning through the visual arts.
Annett-Thomas grew up in western Victoria before moving to Bendigo in 2000 to study Painting and Drawing. Over the following seven years she completed her undergraduate, honours and PhD degrees in Visual Art (Painting) at La Trobe University, Bendigo. Since graduating, she has exhibited her work nationally and internationally.
Among the highlights of her practice was her selection for Bendigo Art Gallery’s Going Solo initiative in 2015, a program that gives a locally based artist the opportunity to work closely with Gallery curators to produce a new body of work for exhibition. The resulting show, Out of Winter, extended Annett-Thomas’s ongoing interest in the processes of memory and our attempts to bind it to material objects and written words. Working across beeswax, oil paint and plaster, she built up tactile layers on her canvases to create a dynamic, sculptural surface that echoed the local landscape. Each layer of medium conceals or reveals abstracted imagery and text, offering the viewer a starting point for contemplation.
We look forward to Karen judging this year’s Daylesford Rotary Art show at the Daylesford Town Hall. The opening night is 29 October, 6 pm at the Daylesford Town Hall. Tickets are available here. The art show runs from 30 October to 3 November.
