Guido Valdez (Vendetta for love)

Louise Weaver concentrates on ideas about metamorphosis, evolution and representation, animating animal and plant forms with a sense of wonder and whimsy. Among the modelmakers who have dominated the younger generation of sculptors in Australia over the past decade (Callum Morton, James Angus and Ricky Swallow, for example), Weaver has brought a distinctive feminine voice to this important strand of contemporary art.
The creatures and environments she creates are obsessively covered in crocheted, stitched, woven and sewn coverings. Apart from enhancing the original form, these epidermises suggest processes of self-transformation, fashionable personal display and a nature subject to the same glossy media fantasies that we are.

Weaver’s work can be situated within Melbourne post-pop art, an important trajectory in Australia since the early 1980s. Her animals relate to the humour and satire of artists such as Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Jenny Watson and Linda Marrinon. Her synthetic interpretation of the physical environment, as evident in her room installations, could even be connected to the high-coloured fantasy that is evident in many of Howard Arkley’s depictions of suburban houses and interiors. Her use of fabric and emphasis on surface also connects with artists such as Mikala Dwyer and Kathy Temin.