Jo Shand
Artist Bio
Jo Shand is Sydney artist from the inner west, who has relocated to Newcastle, NSW. Her paintings preserve and activate memory from decayed buildings, discarded objects of the mundane material world, the ordinary landscape observations, people and animals she has a special connection with. Her paintings are a corresponding memory toward the object, or subject (because they are largely familiar), that characterises a nostalgia for our own past. Jo is a National Arts School graduate who has been exhibiting her paintings in Sydney and NSW for more than 20 years.
Artist Statement
Exhibition 2022: Red Dirt River and Golden Hour
My art practice involves capturing memory and metaphorical imagery of wrecked cars; resilient trees; vivid lights and rugged landscapes. They are part of my personal iconography of moving through an experience, or a place that may include snatches of stories gathered while travelling, relationships of love and loss, and the indifferent beauty of the Australian landscape.
Exhibition 2020: Art Relic
‘Is of Chippendale Brewery. Anyone who lived around Abercrombie Street years ago will remember the constant hum and overpowering smell of hops from this place. It was a looming dark monster that overshadowed the entire suburb, way back when Chippo was a scorned dump renowned for its cheap rotting share houses. The local pubs still had many of the original working class residents lurking in corners, Eveleigh Street was a force to be reckoned with, and cafes
were a rarity.’
‘Most of the surrounding buildings have been torn down now but this monolith survives, though almost impossible to see now as it’s dwarfed by giant apartments and flashy shops that you’d never have dreamed would ever exist in this part of town, let alone all the trees that have appeared now where once there was just grey-brown patchwork with the occasional stubborn weed. Slum Chippendale is gone.’