Brenda Goggs stands with a foot in two worlds as a practising Visual Artist and a former teacher of English, Visual Art, History and Ideas. After beginning her university studies in Japanese, to which she attributes a sensitivity to aesthetics of nuance, it was as a Visual Artist that she was challenged to focus on what was ‘in front of her eyes’.
Exhibiting woven tapestry over the past 25 years, she has focused on Australian identity and the landscape as an ‘object’ in an imperial cabinet of curiosities and during this time has witnessed a national shift towards a search for understanding of our colonial past and our culpability in a quest for ownership. Brenda has also interrogated literature and has interpreted work by Gerald Murnane, Patrick White and David Malouf, as well as collaborated with Geoff Page and Alan Gould. She enjoys a skirmish with ekphrastic poetry and has attempted to sublimate her garden rage in a series focused on possums. Splashing about at the ‘limit of maps’ she continues to investigate boundaries in much of her work.
As a secondary school educator her passion was to lead students into places where words and images jostle and collide as they explore each other’s territory, challenging prejudices and splitting open the world like a fruit, to find seeds of change within. Now with the school timetable set aside, these same issues remain the inspiration for Cracks in the Path, her first published poetry collection.
When she first came to Canberra in the 70s to go to ANU she heard it described as ‘like living inside an artist’s impression’, presumably two dimensional and waiting to be lifted off the page. However, we all know that what you see is what you get and the metaphor makes it worth getting out of bed in the morning.
Tickets: $15 - Concession and MCH Members, $20 Non-members
There will be a Q & A session following Brenda’s readings and refreshments will be served.