Born into a life of ‘crisis’, the Wiradjuri artist has lived through addiction, mental illness and psychosis. Now her first career survey celebrates her perseverance and artistic vision
arla Dickens’s childhood was marked by chaos but when recalling her paternal grandparents, she chokes up. “Well, they were my rocks,” says the 55-year-old Wiradjuri artist. “I just felt really loved.”
“She roused my parents ’cause we’d go to the beach,” recalls Dickens, who is short, with thick, greying hair and an affable vulnerability. “She was like, ‘Keep her out of the sun’.”Photograph: Document Photography/Campbelltown Art Centre Such family history and her own traumatised past inform Dickens’ sharp-witted collages and sculptures, which reflect intergenerational trauma, Indigenous dehumanisation, cultural and environmental loss. Being working class, she’s always aimed to keep her work “open to the widest audience”. She “never wanted to be a part of the art world”, she says with a laugh. “I’m still reluctant.”
At 15, the doctors gave Dickens her first mental health diagnosis. “I had nightmares every night, and then when I was 15 it was depression, and then the more drugs that I took, those diagnoses changed quite a lot.” Later, she would paint many black dogs.“At Maroubra beach, it wasn’t like, ‘What’s your identity?’, it was, ‘What drugs can you get?’ and ‘Where are we gonna party?’ and ‘I’ll look after you’,” she says.
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