Joshua Yeldham: Broken Head

This show, collectively titled 'Broken Head' is ambitious in scale. The artist has pushed himself further than ever before. There are enormous paintings with collaged elements, sometimes organic, foraged from the bush, linen paper pieces carved with a belt sander, giant totemic owls in timber and ceramic, and many ceramic vessels carved, incised and engraved. He is still painting, marking, and making even as I write. For the first time he has created clay frames that seem to emulate ormolu to, in his words, “cocoon” the works, to “shelter” the work. They bear his fingerprints, his hand. They finish the work in a way that ties it all together. “It has always appealed to me to be self-sufficient in my practice and my own cottage industry. Over time, I have learnt to make frames out of clay, firing them with raku glazes to create clay petals like French gilded frames.” Yeldham, I am discovering, is an auto-didact and a perennial student, teaching himself new techniques and inventing some along the way, garnering ideas and approaches on his travels across Australia and the world. This show features Tasmanian masked owls he encountered on a trip with Bob Brown to Takayna, a Forrest under threat. He has just returned from Fowler’s Gap, an arid desert country 200km north of Broken Hill, photographing dead Mulga trees, finding beauty in the process of death and regeneration. Death is presently always on my mind, and it seems Yeldham’s too, but his work reminds me that death is not the end. It is just part of the process of renewal. I’m going to lean into that. – Alison Kubler