ACME London x Creative Australia
Amber Cronin - Application Support Material
10 Examples of Recent Work
1. PW exhibition IMAGE or VIDEO
Against the Rush of the Arrow, 2024. Paradise Works, Manchester.
Brass, recycled textiles, thread, embroidery floss, bronze, cotton.
Concerned with the inevitability of collapse, Amber’s sculptures are conceived as a set of tools to better navigate this epoch of great upheaval. They are artefacts that serve to prepare us for the end life as we know it. Against the rush of the arrow is a set of contemplative, melancholic works that emerge from a need to make sense of an uncertain world. Akin to the historical complexity of textiles themselves, objects and embroideries are laced with symbolism. The use of fabric, thread and wrapping as a means of repair weaves together a lineage of solidarity, shared knowledge and labour that spans from ancient times through the present and into tomorrow. The development of this new work, ‘Against the Rush of the Arrow’ was funded by Helpmann Academy and Arts South Australia for Radical Textiles, commissioned by Art Gallery of South Australia 2024/2025
2. MIF Performance
3. ???
4. Against the Rush of the Arrow, 2024. Art Gallery South Australia
Brass, recycled textiles, thread, embroidery floss, bronze, cotton.
Concerned with the inevitability of collapse, Amber’s sculptures are conceived as a set of tools to better navigate this epoch of great upheaval. They are artefacts that serve to prepare us for the end life as we know it. Against the rush of the arrow is a set of contemplative, melancholic works that emerge from a need to make sense of an uncertain world. Akin to the historical complexity of textiles themselves, objects and embroideries are laced with symbolism. The use of fabric, thread and wrapping as a means of repair weaves together a lineage of solidarity, shared knowledge and labour that spans from ancient times through the present and into tomorrow. The development of this new work, ‘Against the Rush of the Arrow’ was funded by Helpmann Academy and Arts South Australia for Radical Textiles, commissioned by Art Gallery of South Australia 2024/2025
5 Walking the Language of Landscape, 2024 Public Artwork: Hutt Road, SA
Brass, steel, archival text.
The font utilised in the artwork has been developed from archival excerpts and records from the first missionary schools at Piltawodli, literally returning these words, letters and knowledge to the landscape. These letters serve as an embodied sense of journey through the space, creating an interactive and immersive exploration for pedestrians that is rooted deeply in the history of this place. The distributed letters draw a response from (and to) Country, integrating references to the natural landscape as generative relational components.
Language is the heart of culture. It holds the thoughts and ways of seeing the world. Working in partnership with Kaurna Linguist, Jack Buckskin, Walking the Language of Landscape is series of integrated text interventions that publicly celebrate Kaurna language. Speaking language is beyond recall, beyond words. It holds clues about how to read the land, the soil, the trees – to engage in an animacy with the landscape.
6. And it Called to Me, 2021. Praxis Arts Space, SA
Borrowed Objects, archival images, paint,
You take an object from your pocket and put it down in front of you and you start. You begin to tell a story.” - Edmund De Waal (The Hare with the Amber Eyes)
Beyond Measure builds off research and residencies of the Centre for Research Excellence in Frailty and Healthy Ageing to explore beliefs, experiences and misconceptions about frailty and ageing and to provide alternative conceptualizations to these perspectives.
As part of this research, Amber Cronin made weekly visits as artist in residence to Southern Cross Care West Beach across six months. As relationships with residents developed, she became particularly interested in their collections of objects and the specific memories that these keepsakes triggered. Through her time in residence Amber has been intrigued by the theory that objects and people co-construct each other. Cronin believes just as people exert an influence on objects, so do objects exert an influence on people’s thoughts, actions and memories.
In Things Beyond Measure Cronin introduces a body of work that reframes objects as mediators– a conduit between us and the world. Her anthology of images and artefacts examine the value we place on the things we collect through a lifetime, drawing from archival images to illustrate the stories from the community conversations as installation.
7. Islands of Coherence, 2023, Central Gallery, SA
Calico cotton, steel fixings, timber, cotton twill, aluminium, powder coat.
Group Exhibition Open Book featured all new work from South Australian artists Amber Cronin, Loren Orsillo and Kelly Reynolds. Open Book took inspiration from artist’s studio journals and considers their active and reflexive relationship to contemporary artistic practice. This exhibition features embroidered textiles, ceramics, paper assemblage and site-specific installation. Open Book was co-curated by Adelaide Central School of Art graduate Nicole Clift and Adelaide Central Gallery Curator Andrew Purvis.
8. In Preservation I Walk, 2021, Not Fair Art Fair, VIC (detail)
Timber, siltstone, sandstone, quartz, plant matter, soil, porcelain, cotton, hand-dyed embroidery floss.
2020 UNISA HONOURS GRADUATE SHOW
2021 HELPMANN ACADEMY GRADUATE SHOW
2021 NotFiar Art Fair
Sitting between human and plant realms these curiously speculative objects seek to bridge our relationship with the living world, retracing dormant lines of meaning that pass through us and into things larger than ourselves. They signal a remembrance of a sacred path of connection. In preservation I walk finds its genesis in the oscillation between global phenomenon, localised experience and memories of the natural world.
9. Dictionary of Animism, 2022, Floating Goose SA.
SOLO EXHIBITION, INSTALLATION : STOCKROOM VIC, FEBRUARY 2022 + FLOATING GOOSE SA, MAY 2022
CREATIVE ESSAY BY LARA MERRINGTON
Timber, concrete, pewter, steel, bronze, brass, plant matter, river stone, plaster, paper, archival ink, cotton.
Dictionary of Animism is a vocabulary of text-based sculptural objects that investigate the way that meaning extends beyond the rational and formal limits of language.
Grounded in an ongoing examination of hierarchies of knowledge that position language as foundational to meaning-making, Amber Cronin’s body of work looks to extend modes of representation as more widely distributed semiotic ecologies. Alluding to memories and experiences of more-than-human relationships, Dictionary of Animism is an anthology of contemplatively playful works that emerge out of lost purpose and lost meanings; a call to reflect on our relationship with the living world and the dormant lines of meaning that flow around us.
This project was supported by The Helpmann Academy’s Creative Development Grant Program.
An absence of language is far from an absence of meaning.
10. Dictionary of Animism, 2022, Floating Goose SA.
SOLO EXHIBITION, INSTALLATION : STOCKROOM VIC, FEBRUARY 2022 + FLOATING GOOSE SA, MAY 2022
CREATIVE ESSAY BY LARA MERRINGTON
Timber, concrete, pewter, steel, bronze, brass, plant matter, river stone, plaster, paper, archival ink, cotton.
Dictionary of Animism is a vocabulary of text-based sculptural objects that investigate the way that meaning extends beyond the rational and formal limits of language.
Grounded in an ongoing examination of hierarchies of knowledge that position language as foundational to meaning-making, Amber Cronin’s body of work looks to extend modes of representation as more widely distributed semiotic ecologies. Alluding to memories and experiences of more-than-human relationships, Dictionary of Animism is an anthology of contemplatively playful works that emerge out of lost purpose and lost meanings; a call to reflect on our relationship with the living world and the dormant lines of meaning that flow around us.
This project was supported by The Helpmann Academy’s Creative Development Grant Program.
An absence of language is far from an absence of meaning.