These deep, dark cloth and paint compositions are still part of DickensвЂ™ visual language, along with sculptural assemblages made in materials including op-shop finds and rurally flavoured hard rubbish and historical refuse from the Lismore tip.ДЇour decades after the American artist Miriam Schapiro coined the term вЂfemmageвЂ™ for collage art using material associated with womenвЂ™s lives, вЂmaterialityвЂ™ is the subject of new discussions in art. Then she got an exhibition (2) in Lismore, her hometown, and, using fabric, produced new work that вЂreignited my loveвЂ™. (1) Later she had a baby, lost another, a friend died. Karla Dickens began as a painter, making вЂlots of expressionist work in the nineties at the National Art SchoolвЂ™ and, вЂbecause I had little money, IвЂ™d find things to collageвЂ™. It ranges in style from melancholic to acerbic and explores various anxieties of identity from the artist's personal battle with depression to the persistence of aboriginal stereotypes and national myths. Karla's poetry is becoming a more and more important part of her practise. She has then inscribed poetry of her own devising, which runs round the circumference of each of them. Which read as shields installed on the gallery wall. This time sourcing eight metal dustbin lids. In her other installation Fight Club, Karla has again worked with found materials. Whether for love, for money, for children, for home and so on. In Karla's mind each one represents the reason why women stay in abusive relationships. They resemble almost quite carnavalesque items of clothing belying the rather invidious original function of them as straight jackets. With plastic monkeys, with combs, with cows teeth, with human hair. On the left we have Bound an installation of six vintage canvas straight jackets, which have been dyed by Karla in ink and in tea and then customised, embellished with all sorts of found materials.

Karla's Wiradjuri heritage, her sexuality, and her experience as a single mother are the driving forces behind her very raw and honest and deeply personal work. We have two installations by Karla Dickens, a Lismore based indigenous artist in the exhibition.

Moneybag artist