Image: Jennifer Mathews, Illumination in the worn aisle, 2022, photograph Aaron Claringbold.
Creativity and collaboration are at the heart of innovation. Since 2018 UniSA Business has partnered with Guildhouse to present works by contemporary South Australian visual artists to encourage reflection and inspire new ideas.
spout barrel peel
Jennifer Mathews
6 December 2024 — 6 February 2025
Yungondi Building, UniSA City West Campus
Artist talk with Jennifer Mathews
16 January 2025, 1–2pm
Free, RSVP here
Artist Statement
These works use stainless steel tube and layered found imagery to explore themes of interiority in contrast with the materiality of external, built environments. While not created as part of a single project, they form a series that merges geometry as a framing device with natural elements, including a waterspout, a mandarin, and a hay field. Inspired by passages from The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence, where he contrasts the external surface of the world—the “streets, church, people, work, rule-of-the-day”—with the “living fruit” of one’s interior life, which embodies yearnings, beliefs, and aspirations, they consider the tension between these realms. These works highlight the disconnection felt in the life of work, set against the unease of environmental and technological shifts. They examine the relationship between internal experiences and external structures, revealing how they are entwined, yet often at odds.
About the artist
Jennifer Mathews is a sculpture and installation artist based in South Australia. Her recent projects explore human dominion over the non-human, the architectural impulse to measure and contain, and the impact of technological advances on our relationships with the organic world. Mathews examines space through a sociopolitical lens, considering how built environments, shaped by forces of productivity and power, affect bodies used for work in commercial and agricultural contexts. She engages these themes with a focus on the absurdity and alienation inherent in space, drawing upon language and found imagery. Working with materials such as metal, resin, and light, Mathews combines traditional and industrial processes, such as welding, casting, and moulding, to reflect, obscure, and poeticise the built environments that inform her practice.
Mathews holds First Class Honours in Fine Art (2016) from the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, and a Bachelor of Visual Arts (2015) from the University of South Australia, where she received the Constance Gordon-Johnson Sculpture and Installation Prize. In 2023, she was awarded a 12-month studio residency at ACE, Adelaide. Recent exhibitions include UNIT, Laila, Sydney (2024); Studios: 2023, ACE, Adelaide (2023); Coercion Cradle, Al Fresco, Canberra (2023); Staple, Laila, Sydney (2023); and The Sun Ceases to Give Without Receiving, Kings Artist-Run, Melbourne (2022).
Image: Jennifer Mathews, The extreme, 2022, photograph Sebastian Kainey.
Please note: The UniSA Business School Yungondi Building is open Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm.
