CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Amberrose Hulme

Amber-rose Hulme has been announced as a finalists in the Bendigo Art Gallery’s biennial Paul Guest Prize 2018.

After initially pursuing a career in genetics, Amber-Rose Hulme shifted direction in 2011 to pursue a career in fine art. Predominantly working with pastel on paper, Hulme creates evocative, photo-realistic scenes of the urban and industrial everyday. Through the use of metaphor – light, texture and the inevitable nature of decay – her textured images draw out ideas of social circumstance and the experience of personal identity.

Hulme is interested in the idea of graffiti as a visual form of conversation between the many individuals who have contributed to these constantly evolving murals. In the context of these otherwise empty spaces, the letters and shapes that form this unintelligible language seem to clamour for attention in Hulme’s work. She renders the graffiti in sections of vivid colour within otherwise monochrome settings, which serve to amplify the voices of those who’ve left their mark over time. They make a noisy intervention in otherwise silent, folorn spaces, and augment the aesthetic richness of their fading surrounds.
Excerpt from catalogue essay by Marguerite Brown, MAArtCur, 2017

‘Constant movement: water against rock, wind against sand, eating, shaping, moulding. The rigid, manufactured lines of mans contribution stand starkly separate, slicing through the organic rhythm of the coast line, defiantly solid, its unnatural colours jarringly conspicuous like an overly painted face concealing a natural beauty. Yet as impervious as they may seem, they too are not immune. However defiantly our man made constructs may fight the environment on which they impose, their sterile exterior will eventually bow down to its forces. As each crack and pockmark is added to their weathered face do they not become more beautiful? Does allowing oneself to show the strain and knocks endured undermine strength? Or does displaying this vulnerable character expose the true beauty and strength, as they become an integrated part of the environment.’
Amber-Rose Hulme, Artists Statement 2015

The last few years have been busy ones for Hulme, who has been a successful finalist in numerous awards including the Bendigo Art Gallery’s biennial Paul Guest Prize (2018), the Rick Amor Art Prize (2016), the Stanthorpe Art Prize (2016), the Muswellbrook Art Prize (2018, 2015), the Hutchins Art Prize (2015) and the Sunshine Coast Art Prize (2015). Hulme first exhibited with FLG during our annual emerging artist exhibition, Exploration 15, and was subsequently signed on to the gallery stable in 2016. She held her first solo exhibition with the gallery in 2017. Her artwork Tranquil Neglect was acquired by the Art Gallery of Ballarat for their permanent collection in 2016.

CATALOGUE ESSAYS
Forsaken Tranquility, by Marguerite Brown 2017

DOWNLOAD BIO / CV (PDF)