Space Is Never Empty 2020 - 2023

By Veronica Caven Aldous

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 my artwork from 2020 - 2023. It is the sixth of a series of books that documents the progression of my art practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Veronica M Aldous
• Release date: Oct 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645773231

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

2020 - 2023 has been memorable for me as a period of reappraising my whole art practice. I have worked with a range of mediums - paint, light, video, drawing, photography, and installation – and affirmed that my art sits within the extended field of painting. I have worked in isolation in my studio for extended periods due to pandemic lockdowns, undertaken residencies, and was invited to take part in comprehensive exhibitions of women’s abstract art. I have also been considering my visual archive and working on this series of books Space Is Never Empty.

In 2020 I began the year exhibiting three works in a group show Light + Life at Brightspace, St Kilda, part of the NGV’s Melbourne Design Week. I exhibited a video, a self-published book and a performative experience, all set up within an installation. The exhibition was shut down the day after opening due to our first lockdown here in Melbourne, so I resigned myself to staying home and working in the studio. However, I was able to participate in the Home/Work public art exhibition by Metro Tunnel Creative Program, Melbourne.

At the same time, I worked on a novel based on my diaries entitled Australian Women Can Walk, Gap Year 1979, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The lockdown periods provided time to complete this and other older projects, and to consider future work. I was considering how to archive my five decades of work, and I cleaned out my storage. As I had just self-published a novel, I