Holly O’Meehan’s art practice explores the effects of colonial agricultural techniques on the natural environment with in the Great Southern and South West Regions of Western Australia through a range of sculptural based outcomes. Strongly influenced by growing up on her families cropping farm on land belonging to the Goreng people of the Nyoongar nation, she incorporates hand made clay and ceramic objects with found organic material and relevant discarded items, in order to develop speculative dystopic landscapes that question the higher-achy between humans and the environment. Her experimental practice results in the sculptures having a whimsical, creature-like presence; their playful and defensive structures seem to repel and beguile in equal measure. By appropriating natural forms in an attempt to highlight the beauty of the hidden and unassuming, and purposely making with slow, repetitive movements in a way that honours the time it takes the environment both recover and flourish, O’Meehan’s practice focuses on collective hope that one day the natural environment will be able to overcome its greatest competitor; humans.
Holly O’Meehan has developed her creative approach throughout the course of a double Bachelor in Fine Arts and Art & Design at Curtin University (2014), an intensive Ceramic Skill Set Post Graduate course at North Metropolitan TAFE (2020), and a mentorship program organised through ArtSource WA, in late 2020. She has exhibited in a number of group exhibitions such as Animaze at the Fremantle Arts Centre in 2018, Ceramic - Bronze - Stone in New Delhi India, & Sculpture@Bathers in 2022. She has also created significant solo exhibitions Elusive Tactility at Paper Mountain in 2018, & Defence/Defiance at Heathcote Gallery in 2021, as well as been selected for prizes such as the 2019 John Stringer Prize & the Joondalup Invitation Art Prize in 2022. In 2017 O’Meehan was selected for a major residency with Art Ichol in India, & more recently the highly competitive funded residency at The Farm Margaret River in 2021, also resulting in a solo exhibition Hidden and Unassuming. She was invited to participate in the 2023 Bunbury Biennale, & more recently showing her newest solo exhibition at the Belco Arts Centre in Canberra in late 2024 as well as three group exhibitions as part of the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial in Perth and Bangkok.
All images are courtesy of the artist.