Penny Hulbert
As well as Australia, I have lived in the UK, Japan and Germany and this frequent relocation has undoubtedly impacted on my perception of the world. I currently negotiate my art practice with teaching Visual Art and Photography at secondary school. I am currently completing a PhD at Wollongong University, investigating the contemporary sublime.
The premise of the Sublime rests on an existential understanding of uncertainty – the precipice of being and non-being. The collapse of boundaries and ambiguous spaces draw me to this topic, which I am investigating in relation to memory, nostalgia and landscape. My work references, either implicitly or explicitly, the key concerns of the contemporary sublime, exploring, terror, the uncanny, transcendence, nature, technology and the ‘unpresentable’.
My art practice explores the interactions of different mediums, and as in Nature, there is a dynamic of flux. The generally small scale of my paintings is deliberate and functions as a threshold for potential immensity. I am inspired by works that communicate; ideas, tensions, the sublime, absence and presence.