Joint exhibition: Preserving ostranenie, by Karyn Fearnside and Teah Fort

The artists Karyn Fearnside and Teah Fort come together using the common object of a rockmelon to form the basis for a joint exhibition. Defamiliarisation, or ostranenie, is the artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way in order to enhance perception of the familiar. Karyn responds to the rockmelon using ostranenie, She explored rockmelons with felting, crochet, painting, drawing, photography and more. Eventually she took all these results back to the computer for manipulation. Meanwhile, Teah’s family experienced the death of the family dog, her 18-year-old daughter wanted Basil stuffed and why not? Teah suddenly found her rockmelon work taking on real meaning for her, the act of preserving something, a memory, a moment in time, an actual object and began the process of experimenting with the rockmelon and preserving techniques. Teah also continued to work with natural/unnatural materials, recycled plastic and organic fibres.