Isabella Kirkland Lecture

When:
Thursday,
11 April 2019
Time:
6-7.30pm
Where:
Fox Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, UWA
Cost:
Free
Audience:
General Public, Faculty/Staff, Students, Alumni

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Paradise Parrots © ISABELLA KIRKLAND

This lecture is presented in partnership with the Holmes à Court Gallery.

Stilled Life: the art of Isabella Kirkland

A public lecture held in conjunction with the Holmes à Court Gallery.

Isabella Kirkland is a fine art painter specializing in Natural History. Fusing the style of the 17th Century Dutch Masters with the more classical naturalistic tradition, Kirkland’s art addresses the ecological challenges that we currently face. Her magnificently sumptuous and complex oil paintings serve as a meticulous visual record of the many life forms that are on the brink of annihilation or are already extinct. Kirkland’s art bears witness to loss and testifies to the existence of those animals and plants that in the near future will be relegated to the historical record of this world.

In this lecture Isabella Kirkland will discuss her paintings and the role that her art plays in drawing attention to the loss of life forms. Isabella will be introduced by Janet Holmes à Court, AC.

Following Isabella's presentation, Tim Allard, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy and Professor Stephen Hopper from the Centre of Excellence in Natural Resource Management at UWA will give a short talk on animal extinctions and declining biodiversity in Australia.

Isabella Kirkland has been listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 leading artists in the United States. Over the course of her career, Kirkland has depicted hundreds of species, many of which are now extinct, many are on the edge of extinction and some are newly discovered. Her art has featured in several prominent exhibitions and is held in numerous collections. She has had solo exhibitions at the Toledo Art Museum, Ohio, the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, and the Sun Valley Centre for the Arts, Idaho, and her work has been included in group shows at the Field Museum, Chicago, the Tucson Museum of Art, de Pury & Luxembourg, Zurich, the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts, San Francisco, and the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Since 2006, Kirkland has been a principal field researcher and illustrator for the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco.