pamela kouwenhoven
installations

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Hahndorf 2008

      
  

      
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Palmer 2008
 
 











      
Mourning is one of those
      crucial and unusual elements of human expression which none of
      us can evade but few of us understand. Pamela Kouwenhoven has
      courageously ventured into the litter of graveyards and has sought
      deliberately to work with items which might be written off as
      "kitch". This kind of material usually finds its way
      to a rubbish dump. Its "plasticness" indicates easy
      obsolescence and the "throw away culture". Indeed,
      it often has that character simply because it relates to people's
      very deep fears and is resisted as part of the untouchable culture
      of death.

      
Pamela Kouwenhoven has
      brought this material into a new artistic and cultural context
      and given it new meaning both aesthetically and symbolically.
      In other words, like the "junk sculptor", she has redeemed
      the material by creating from it a whole range of new images
      with unusual textures still related to the theme of mourning
      but presented in more accessible situations. She has done more
      than merely "sanitise" the material. She has moved
      the elements of the artefacts into a new context which enables
      clearer vision of the symbolic significance and process associated
      with mourning.

      
She exhibits great care
      with materials and an outstanding attention to detail.

      
Extract from letter by Most Revd Ian George
Archbishop of Adelaide  2003