Margaret West

Margaret West visits cemeteries ‘whenever and wherever the opportunity arises’ and observes the varying material characteristics and uses of flowers at these contemplative sites (Artist’s notes, May 2003).

Since 1980 West has worked with lead and non-precious stones in what she informally notes are her ‘weighty works’, incorporating these materials into the experimental jewellery objects for which she is acclaimed: a counterweighted neckpiece of fine steel wire threaded with river stones at either end; ordinary rocks wrapped in paper-thin sheets of gold; slices of marble and slate cut into floral shapes for brooches. West’s work is distinguished by her continual excursions between the intimacy and scale of the wearable object, the devotional object, and large-scale sculptural installations that retain their references to the body, but that suggest, like STILL LIFE (natura mortua), an expanded potential to metaphorically embody physical and emotional states, private meditations and public statements.

Jason Smith
Curator, Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria
Excerpts from exhibition catalogue

 

Margaret West
Australia 1936
STILL LIFE (natura mortua), 2003 (detail)
stone, paint, graphite, wax
1249 pieces, dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist