Predominantly a painter, Imbi’s work explores the complexity and beauty within the Australian landscape through a personal language of marks, scratches and layers. Like maps, her paintings chart an course of discovery through abstract waters, discerning patterns of nature, wild emotional thoughts and intuitive responses.
Currently living on the east coast of Australia, Imbi spent twelve years in the Northern Territory as an artist, traveller and researcher. Having been the recipient of an Australian Post Graduate award, Imbi Completed her Masters in 2012 researching the representation of native plants in Australia. Imbi has maintained a professional art practice for over 15 years and exhibited widely across Australia. Her work is held in numerous private collections. Her recent solo exhibitions include; Tales of the Winds (2014), The Casuarina Tree (2013), The Lost City (2012) & Lost at Sea (2011). She is represented by RAFT Artspace (NT) and The Channon Gallery (NSW).
THE STORY BLANKET
“She could never bring herself to trim them to any pattern; so she shifted and fitted and mused and fitted and shifted them like pieces of a patient puzzle-picture.” – William Faulkner, Sartoris.
This work, The Story Blanket, puzzles together fragments of a thousand stories; a thousand stars.
Beginning as a discarded blanket, over the years, multiple stitches, patches, buttons and plants have enmeshed themselves into the fabric. It reads as a poetic map of the lands upon which this blanket has been sewn which traverses many roads across the Australian landscape. It tells of seasons passing, pathways ushered and of many threads coalescing into a singular patchwork universe. Every stitch, every shard of fabric, every button contains a story and connection to a time and place. This work is a landscape of the fabric of the soul.
123cm x 173cm, mixed media on woollen blanket
2015