Linde Ivemey:Transcendence of Childhood

As curator of the imaginary mini exhibition of works chosen from works from Linde Ivemey's If Pain Persists exhibition at the UQ Art Museum, I have selected the following: Sitha (2007), a bunny figure kneeling in front of a three room doll's house full of furniture made from bones; and, Off with her head! (2012), depicting a bunny as Alice defying the queen in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

A common thread through Linde's works is her use of recycled materials, predominantly bone, animating the images with something once living. The works I have chosen, contain the bones of sheep, turkey, duck, chicken, quail, fox, cow and fish, as well as other materials such as dyed cloth, laundry lint, seed pods and human hair.

Although many of Linde's figures are faceless, the two bunnies in these works have eyes and a nose, indicating their reference to a real person, Linde herself, having been nicknamed "Bunny" by her sisters as a child.

I chose these particular works due to their references to childhood and the transcendence experienced when a child immerses herself in play. In Sitha, the bunny child has found a gateway to another existence--the imaginary lives lived in the doll's house. In Off with her head!, the bunny child is totally immersed in the lives played out in the story, becoming a character herself.

Each work represents the childhood sacred rituals of play and literature, allowing us a momentary backwards glance into the rabbit holes of our own childhoods.