catch rachel burke’s beaded exhibition in brisbane now
You might remember that last year craft queen Rachel Burke used melty beads to create our party-inspired 20th birthday cover, and spoke to us about how therapeutic the process of working with the childhood craft material has been for her.
This month, Rachel is back with a bright yet tender exhibition of artworks that utilise more than half a million melty beads. Thanks for Nothing, which is currently running at Brisbane/Magandjin’s Side Gallery until February 14th, explores Rachel’s experiences with fertility, miscarriage and grief through dozens of beaded works, including multi-metre wall hangings, quilts and bags.
Rachel has been working on the pieces for more than a year, and the experience has been a therapeutic way to work through trauma and grief. “Miscarriage and fertility issues are astonishingly still taboo topics, despite how many people experience it. I’m not the first to examine these themes but I wanted to contribute to breaking down the stigma while also making sense of my own journey,” she says.
The artworks are intended to spark important conversations about difficult topics by presenting them in Rachel’s signature colourful, playful style. “These works, like us as people, showcase the layers of the human experience. It reminds us that while on the surface we can project joy, colour, and fun, underneath there can be extremely painful things that we are working through,” she says.
Like our 20th birthday cover, Rachel has used recycled melty beads to create these pieces with the goal of promoting sustainability. “It’s important to me to highlight how we can reuse, recycle, repurpose and redirect to make something special from what is so often discarded.”
For more info about Thanks for Nothing, pop over to the Side Gallery website.
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