2025 MECCA Holiday Collaboration
Karen Black
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Fed Square
Level 2
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Opens 4 Oct 2025 – Mar 2026
Open daily 10am–5pm
Karen Black reimagines traditional representations of the body and portraiture through abstraction. Black’s often ambiguous work evokes intimacy and vulnerability, informed by her interest in ideas of desire, emotion and the self. In her work, the human form is presented as fluid rather than fixed – merging with its surroundings, fractured and reforming, shaped by internal and external tensions.
In this display, Black brings together new paintings and ceramics that explore the porous boundary between our interior and exterior worlds. Depicting enigmatic figures in dreamlike landscapes that hover between natural and domestic spaces, these works wrestle with the emotional complexity of contemporary life from a feminist perspective. Black’s works offer personal yet open-ended spaces in which to consider ideas of care, power, autonomy and transformation in today’s world.
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