Gallery 3
Mourning Funes
Camille Thomas and Ada Hale
Mourning Funes is an exhibition that combines two practices that work with ritual: the ritual of making and ritual made personally sacred. Working with clay, wax, drawing and found object/ image, this installation intends to lead you by the hand through a set of seemingly encrypted images and objects: offered in the absence of a map that could be used to make connections. The act of making, as it interweaves with personal narrative, is brought together through visual references to mythology, folklore and the gothic. In creating these ceremonial works that are referential of mourning and decay, materials begin to flake, rot. Clay crumbles, candles liquesce and turn to puddles. Mourning Funes came from our shared interest in the imagery and symbolism of grottos–as well as the spaces they hold in our memories, as holes in the ground.
Ada Hale is an artist living on the unceded land of the Boon Wurrung and Wurrundjeri people of the wider Kulin Nation. Ada’s practice delves into different modes of storytelling, studying the relationships between fantasy and the corporeal. Their practice is largely influenced by the symbolic importance of traditional stories from folklore and mythology, especially how they can be reinterpreted in relation to current personal narratives. The rendering of these stories is imbued with romantic imagery, whilst conserving a sense of facetiousness and wit. Coming from a background in theatre and music, their processes are often derived from similar methods of production and conceptual frameworks. Working in a multidisciplinary practice, they thematically engage in ideas through installation, painting, filmmaking and poetry. Ada is currently in their third year of a Bachelor of Fine Arts at RMIT.
Camille Thomas is an artist living and working on the unceded land of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri peoples of the wider Kulin nation. Camille’s practice processes the act of unravelling, thinking through making. Examining thoughts of self, memory and intimacy, their self-reflexive practice considers the multiplicity of the body, meaning and experience. Currently working in performance and text based practice, they are interested in how the self can be transcribed into text, that then can be used for performance and other art making. Camille comes from a background in drawing, now engaging in how an expanded understanding of drawing can be applied to the personal (transcribing the internal), as well as material and spatial modes of making. Camille completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at RMIT in 2018, and is currently undertaking their Honours year at VCA.
