Moonlight becomes you

Weaver's ideas concentrate on metamorphosis, evolution and representation as she explores animal and plant forms. ACCA notes: 'Among the modelmakers who have dominated the younger generation of sculptors in Australia over the past decade (Callum Morton, James Angus and Ricky Swallow, for example), Weaver has brought a distinctive feminine voice to this important strand of contemporary art. The creatures and environments she creates are obsessively covered in crocheted, stitched, woven and sewn coverings. Apart from enhancing the original form, these epidermises suggest processes of self-transformation, fashionable personal display and a nature subject to the same glossy media fantasies that we are." Her research context is extensive. Animals relate to the humour and satire of Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Jenny Watson and Linda Marrinon. Her synthetic interpretation of the physical environment, evident in room installations such as this, has parallels with the high-coloured fantasy evident in many of Howard Arkley's depictions of suburban houses and interiors. Her use of fabric and emphasis on surface also connects with artists such as Mikala Dwyer and Kathy Temin. Weaver selects her subjects for characteristics which she perceives possess a self-conscious anthropomorphism, Such traits are realised in the coverings she individually tailors for each creature, designed to convey these attributes and transform the animal into a further stage of evolutionary possibility, building on relationships between human and animal in the natural and cultural worlds we share. In interrogating the interactions between human and non-human worlds her animals and their representations are therapeutic companions, a stand-in for the relationships or personas to which we aspire. Stuffed and mounted, they give the impression that we have control over our environment and how we live in it. This room-sized installation was subsequently sold in separate components. Anne Loxley, SMH 07/10/03