Kirtika Kain’s exploration of caste and its continuing presence in the diaspora has come to Campbelltown Arts Centre as the Australian artist prepares to take part in the 18th Lyon Biennale.
Her exhibition Pitch draws on her Dalit heritage and uses materials associated with labour, ritual and social status to examine how history can remain embedded in physical substances.
Tar is central to the exhibition. Across Kain’s works, it carries a history of extraction, labour and transformation, alongside cultural associations with ceremony and medicine. Gold and turmeric also form part of a material language through which she considers cultural memory, class and inherited social structures.
The exhibition was first presented at Murray Art Museum Albury and is now being shown in partnership with Campbelltown Arts Centre. Its Campbelltown presentation comes at an important stage in Kain’s career following her selection for the Lyon Biennale.
Visitors will also have an opportunity to work directly with the artist during an intensive printmaking workshop at the centre on Saturday, 29 August.
The session, titled Layered Impressions: Exploring Print Techniques with Kirtika Kain, will run from 10am to 2.30pm. It has been developed in response to Pitch and will examine printmaking through processes of layering, transfer and transformation.
Participants will use inks, gold leaf and textured materials to build layered compositions. Kain will introduce monoprinting with acetate, drypoint, chine-collé and lino techniques, with surfaces used at different stages as both printing plates and finished impressions.
Kirtika Kain will lead a printmaking workshop inspired by her exhibition Pitch at Campbelltown Arts Centre on August 29. The exhibition continues until 13 September
The workshop will also cover overprinting, resist methods and casting impressions. Rather than treating materials solely as artistic tools, the session will consider the cultural histories attached to substances such as gold and pigment and how those meanings can be extended or reframed through art.
Participants will be encouraged to draw on their own relationships with materials and memory while developing a personal approach to image-making. Each person will complete a print in which successive layers preserve a record of the creative process.
No previous printmaking experience is required. A light lunch will be provided during the one-hour break.
Pitch will remain on display at Campbelltown Arts Centre until 13 September.
For more information and bookings, visit Campbelltown Arts Centre.
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