RAF MCDONALD
Rhyming Stance
17 May 2017—03 Jun 2012
I am thinking about joy as something that lasts and something that fades like stained stoneware and hard boiled candy. My casual worker body holding onto a pair of pants. I remember things aren’t fixed, this is just a pause in the life span of the pants. These pants are made of the ground and fired at 1300 degrees. Stained with oxides to make patterns using the technique that candy makers use, called Millefiori (1 million flowers). A pause, a holding stance. A position can’t be held forever and precariousness ‘is always relational and therefore shared with other precarious lives’[1]. Something for joy, rhymes with jumping.
Rafaella is an artist living in Narrm Melbourne. She is interested in colour, gesture and hand made materials in relation to the body. In 2017 Rafaella completed a large scale installation, ‘Pose Like This’ with Emma Collard for the Substation Newport, and presented work as a finalist in the Midsumma Art Prize Show at Fort Delta. Other shows include ‘Angkot Alien’ Next Wave Festival with Natasha Gabriella Tontey (2016) ‘Paintings for Performances’ Fort Delta (2015), ‘The Kaleidoscopic Turn’ National Gallery of Victoria with Briony Galligan (2015). She has had large painted mural works commissioned by Melbourne Fringe Festival, Shepparton Art Museum and the City of Stonnington. Rafaella received First Class Honours at the Victorian College of the Arts (2015) and holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts from Melbourne University (2009). She has studied at Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta (2012) and was a participant in the Next Wave Kickstart program (2015).
[1] Isabell Lorey, State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious (London: Verso, 2015)
These exhibitions are part of TCB’s Prolegomenon series supported by the City of Melbourne’s Arts Grants Program, Creative Victoria and Hells Kitchen, which encourages intergenerational exchange between
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