SPACE IS NEVER EMPTY 1975 - 1980s

By Veronica Caven Aldous

Space Is Never Empty, 1975-1980s

My art career spans five decades and builds on my lifelong interest in meditation, philosophy, and feminism as conduits of freedom and peace. This book provides a survey of the work I created in my formative young adult years, from beginning art

• Language: English
• Publisher: Veronica M Aldous
• Release date: Jul 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645169331

Veronica Caven Aldous

VERONICA CAVEN ALDOUS is an artist and writer based in Melbourne, Australia. My published work includes a memoir, Australian Women Can Walk: Gap Year 1979, India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, and articles for a feminist art magazine. More at: veronicacavenaldous.com

Book preview

Introduction

When you begin making art regularly you wonder if you will have a loud voice in the field, or if indeed you will develop a voice at all. You wonder if the history of art in Australia will suffer from the reductionist nature of history, and if only the loudest voices will prevail over time. In putting together this book I am interested in giving voice to my practice as part of a more fully inclusive strengthening of the history of art in Australia.

To do this I have presented an extensive series of images of my artwork in this book. The selected works reveal my sense of progress. I have set up combinations of ideas within different bodies over work over time. My aim is to set up a visual dissertation. What has emerged from this exercise is an awareness that I have been building my own field of art. At times it has been shaped by the circumstances that have surrounded it, whilst at others, recurring threads are visible and ever-present.

Through this introduction I am giving an extended biography alongside the development of ideas and experiences developed in my work. The practical concerns of life have influenced the available time, financial resources and space available to work in. There have been pivotal times of engagement with study and travel. There have been periods of rest, with no art making or exhibiting of work. There have been periods of no documentation. Life is not tidy nor linear. Life is fuzzy at the edges, and expands out into diverse experiences that overlap, and are in transition, across time and in every direction.

As a fifth-generation Australian, born and now based in Melbourne, I have lived in many other places including Sydney, Perth, The Netherlands, and India, and travelled to many more. Recently I learnt