Artist Collaboration / 13
For our 13th Peer/Peer Collaboration, Hena Alexanda Lane Dupreez collaborated with Swiss artist Gabi Deutsch. Hena works with the supported studio DADAA in Western Australia. This collaboration was supported by Creative Australia.
Hena Alexanda Lane Dupreez
Currently working out of DADAA in Fremantle, full time artist Hena studied art at Curtin University, Central and Leederville TAFE, and has presented work across the Perth region for the past 30 years and as such, has developed an extensive collection of paintings, drawings, and sculpture.
Hena's work is informed by the collective ideas and images of everyday life, with esoteric elements making up the surreal landscapes and portraits that define his artworks. His paintings are often pattern-based, he has an interest in the aesthetics of topographical maps, architecture and interlocking structure and form. Archetypes such as the chalice, the star, and human and animal figures often emerge through the work.
Hena's work features in many local and national private and public collections. He has been featured in many publications and was most recently involved in the Street Gallery Fremantle project in 2023.
Gabi Deutsch
Gabi Deutsch explores forms of abstraction and translation in her work by exploring the potentials of the material, its structure, and its transformations and making the processuality visible. Forms from architecture, art and design history serve as references for her work. Deutsch has been working mainly with ceramics for several years. She produces unique, hand-moulded pieces that are somewhere between a work of art and a functional design object.
Artwork before the collaboration
Click on each image below for a larger view of each artist’s work before the collaboration. Caption details appear when you hover over the works.
Ping Pong
Rock formation in South Western Australian shared by Hena (above).
Lino-print by Hena shared at the first meeting.
During the first Zoom meetings Hena and Gabi shared images of their local environments. For Gabi, it was the wintery scenes and her local river in Zurich, Switzerland, while Hena shared the rural landscape of South Western Australia found beyond the city limits of Perth. Specifically, there was an image of interesting rock formations, shared by Hena, that Gabi found very inspiring. There was also specific geometric lino-print by Hena that he shared that also peaked Gabi’s interest.
Initially Gabi and Hena were making drawings inspired from each other’s landscape images, but over the chats and sharing works, the collaboration began to form an exciting ‘ping-pong’ style where the artists continued to develop ideas each expanding on the artists’ new work presented during the online meet-ups.
From Hena sharing the photograph of an Australian rock formation to a collaborative lamp - explore below how the back and forth; the pinging and ponging of ideas; inspiration and influence informed this incredible collaboration!
After some initial sketches, Gabi continued to be inspired by images shared by Hena of his local Western Australia landscape and his geometric print, and she made these ceramic sculptures.
Unfired ceramic work in progress by Gabi Deutsch (2024)
Unfired ceramic work in progress by Gabi Deutsch (2024)
Hena then made a series of small scale drawings collectively titled Insight into Cosmic Form inspired from Gabi’s forms.
Click on each image below for a larger view. Caption details appear when you hover over the image.
Everyone loved the imagination behind Hena’s drawings, so Gabi sent him photographs of her unfired ceramics. Hena printed them and drew designs on top to inspire Gabi’s glazing process.
Colour print of Gabi’s ceramic, with black marker drawing by Hena to suggest a pattern for the glaze.
Greyscale print of Gabi’s ceramic, with black pen drawing by Hena to suggest a pattern for the glaze.
A bright idea
In addition to the drawings and ceramics that were co-inspired across Hena and Gabi’s practices, they had the idea to combine their work by making a collaborative lamp. Gabi made the ceramic base and Hena painted the lampshade! In keeping with their ‘ping-pong’ style, Hena provided ideas for Gabi’s sculptural base and Gabi gave feedback on his preparatory drawings for the lampshade.
Gabi’s unfired ceramic base in progress in her studio with a sample lampshade on top.
From left: Hena Dupreez, Sally Renshaw and Gabi Deutsch. Sally and Hena are sharing over Zoom the chosen lampshade that just arrived and is ready to be painted by Hena!
From top left: DADAA’s Sally Renshaw, Hena Dupreez, Art et al. co-founder Lisa Slominski, Gabi Deutsch. Gabi is showing examples of lampshades over Zoom to decide which shape and size will work with the base.
Hena painting his lampshade in the studio at DADA
Hena made several preliminary sketch ideas for his lampshade painting. He shared this with Gabi who chose the above sketches as some of her favourite, though encouraged Hena to follow his instincts on the final designs. Click on each image above for a larger view. Caption details appear when you hover over the image.
Creative Outcomes
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Artists’ Responses
Hena said of the collaboration:
The collaboration was a joy. I liked the to and fro: reminded me of working with Danny K Hoo years ago, It was a chance to see more variations of the design cosmos “Cosmic Surrealism”
Gabi said of the collaboration:
The collaboration with Hena was inspiring and pushed me to find new forms. It was great to see how the dimensions moved back and forth from 2D to 3D in this dialogue.