Work in Progress: Raewyn Walsh
I don’t get to see Raewyn in person as much as some of the other makers — we live in different cities, and lockdowns and other Covid complications have made things harder. So it was really nice to be able to visit Raewyn at her place recently, and see the new body of work she’s been making for the first time!
When we first started talking, Raewyn and I spoke a little bit about her work as a whole — the pieces she’s produced in the past, and the threads that can be drawn through them all. One of the things that I admire about Raewyn’s work is that she has developed a recognisable language even as she continually experiments with new materials and ways of working.
Raewyn frequently works with natural materials — e.g. shell and bone — or mimics the forms of the natural world — e.g. her rock brooches. Recently she has begun experimenting with beeswax, which she has a small supply of each year from the bees kept in her backyard.
The wax is combined with pigment, essential oils, and damar crystals — which helps the wax harden. With the essential oils, the pieces invite us to experience them through a combination of our senses: sight, touch, and smell.
Raewyn intends them as pendants, and they are hollow. The idea that the wax encases a void is compelling, in a dark and mysterious way, calling to deeply ingrained human impulses. Raewyn introduced me to this idea of “l’appel du vide” (the call of the void) — the urge to throw yourself off a high place — which some people describe as a kind of death wish, and is sort of an unknowable human urge.
I think many of Raewyn’s works have this unknowable quality — they appeal to our human instincts on a ‘feeling’ level, even if we can’t quite put into words what the feeling or the appeal is.
— Emma