Karen Black (b. 1961, Australia) veils and unveils desire and emotion in her works, transforming traditional representations of portraiture towards and away from abstraction. She creates places charged with emotion, committing to the offer of chance and risk within paint and clay. By embedding the figure within the tactility of these materials, she locates raw connection and intuition. Across the entire span of her practice, Black’s idiosyncratic methods of making are forged through considerations of care and gentleness. Her works balance gesture, surface and composition into ambiguous and elliptical responses to what is real, remembered and imagined.
Black has exhibited work in major Australian institutions, including the Art Gallery of NSW, National Gallery of Victoria, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle Art Gallery, Ngununggula Southern Highlands Regional Art Gallery, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Shepparton Art Museum, Monash University Museum of Art, Griffith University Art Museum, Gertrude Contemporary, as well as internationally in Brussels, Tokyo, Taipei, Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong. In 2019, she was awarded the Glasshouse/Stonehouse Residency, Chenaud, France, and in 2017, was a recipient of the Artspace One Year Studio Program. She has been a finalist in several major art prizes, including the Archibald and Sir John Sulman Prizes held at the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney.
Black’s work is held in public collections such as the National Gallery of Victoria, Australian War Memorial, Shepparton Art Museum, Museum of Brisbane, Griffith University Art Museum, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Monash University Museum of Art, Artbank, and the Salsali Private Museum, Dubai. She lives and works on Gadigal Land, Sydney, and is a lecturer at the National Art School.