Thursday, March 28, 2024

Shadow beings: Juana Beltran

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A powerful experience at the Horsham Regional Art Gallery

From Saturday 25th March Horsham Regional Art Gallery invites the community to celebrate up and coming Spanish born, Ararat-based artist Juana Beltran in her transformative reflection of her time in the Australian desert.

Formed from the desert plains, the human-like figures which form the body of work in the exhibition project shadows that represent a reflection of our other selves.

The shadows are a connection to Beltran’s desert journey and her connection to the land.

Horsham Regional Art Gallery has worked with Beltran to transform her experiences into an installation that echoes the impermanence of being and all its physical and psychological states.

Beltran’s practice is centred on the improvisational process that explores the notion of ephemerality that spans different artistic disciplines and collaborative works.

About her exhibition, Juana Beltran states the inspiration to work arises through observations of the environment… waiting for a trigger or simply reflecting on intuitive actions or feelings.

“Without realising what I was experiencing in the desert, I was dealing with my own shadow side. That part of us that deeply expresses or comes sometimes by surprise because you can never anticipate how you will feel.”

As Swiss psychiatrist, psychologist and writer Carl Jung says, “Everyone carries a shadow, the unconscious part of our character or personality that doesn’t align with the ideal version of what we are aiming for.”

Beltran’s exhibition appeared as an installation at the Murtoa Stick Shed in November 2022 and will feature at the gallery until the 18th June.

Exhibition Dates: 25 March 2023 – 18 June 2023, open daily 10am-4pm (closed Christmas day).

Horsham Regional Art Gallery, 80 Wilson Street, Horsham www.horshamtownhall.com.au

Nhill Free Press & Kaniva Times 29 March 2023

This article appeared in the Nhill Free Press & Kaniva Times, 29 March 2023.

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