Fran Callen

Artist Statement // This artwork explores the labour and terrifying love of motherhood. The careful navigation of family change, grief and treading safely. Drawing collaboratively across a tabletop has for me, long become a way to maintain an art practise while continuing the daily business of domestic routines. My children and sometimes friends participate and spills are welcomed. These evolve into a palimpsest of time, gathered moments and stages in the mess and chaos of family life. Domestic/household recycling is inherent in the process of each work here, shifting the hierarchy of residue. I’m interested in exploring connections between drawing and geology. Each hold histories. To the plaster casts of domestic recycling (mental note – must put recycling out) I have applied by hand interpretations of geological processes inspired by conversations with my geologist father. Layered with drawing, these objects suggest narrative, and hold personal symbolism open to interpretation by the experience of others. Materials are gathered with my children, from around the home and backyard, adding to the story. 

Please pick up, hold, turn over, and gently replace the objects. Handle with care.

Fran Callen’s drawing-based work documents her family’s relationship with domestic spaces and their impact on the natural world. Motherhood provides an ambient background. In 2003 Callen won the Ruth Tuck Scholarship to Santa Repararta International School of Art, Florence, returning to complete Honours in Visual Arts at SASA in 2005. After 2012 the kitchen tabletop became, out of motherhood-necessity, her studio; domestic routines marking evolving palimpsests across unstretched canvas ‘tablecloths’. Tabletop 1 won the Fleurieu Food & Wine Art Prize 2016. ‘Just Add Water’, work responding to her 2019 Country Arts residency to Grindell’s Hut in Adnyamathanha country, was exhibited at Yarta Purlti Cultural Centre, Port Augusta, and Hahndorf Academy in 2022. Callen’s work is regularly shortlisted in national art prizes that have included the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing and the Paul Guest Prize. She has taught drawing and painting across Adelaide’s art schools for over fifteen years, currently at Adelaide College of the Arts.

@callenfran
francallen.com

Jennifer Eadie writes about Fran Callen in Neoterica 2024.

Fran Callen, Overburden, (detail from Heave), 2024, graphite, gesso, colourpencil, biro, tea, coffee, wine, eucalyptus sap, ash, turmeric, dirt,charcoal, graphite dust, watercolour, acrylic, oils, glitter, gold leaf,burnt marshmellow and eggshells on cast plaster recycling on tabletop, 106.5 x 121 x 71 cm. Includes drawings by Acacia Hayat (11) andZakir Hayat (9). Sam Roberts Photography.