Launched in 2014, Going Solo is an exciting initiative providing locally based artists, at various stages of their careers, the unique opportunity to produce a new body of work to be presented in a solo exhibition at the gallery. Going Solo reinforces the gallery’s commitment to fostering and promoting the careers of artists from central Victoria by showcasing the best of local contemporary art alongside significant national and international exhibitions.

Working closely with gallery curators, Karen will develop a new body of work for solo exhibition at Bendigo Art Gallery at the end of 2015.

Karen lives in Bendigo with her husband and four small boys. She grew up in western Victoria and moved to Bendigo to study Painting and Drawing at La Trobe University in 2000. 

Since graduating, Karen has exhibited her work across Australia. 

In 2006, she was awarded the British Council’s Mordant Visual Art award through which she undertook a studio-residency at Cell Studios in London. Karen is an Honorary Associate of the newly formed La Trobe Art Institute and is actively engaged in the visual arts in Bendigo. 

In 2007 she completed her PhD, Memory, Loss and the Memorial Books of the First World War. Karen’s current practice extends her interest in memory and our attempts to preserve it in material culture. 

In describing her practice, Karen says, “time spent in the studio is simultaneously joyous and melancholic, as I grapple with the ephemeral and fluid nature of memory through the tactility and viscosity of paint. Each painting is an exploration of the processes of memory and our attempts to bind it to material objects and written words.”