KEVIN PERKINS AM AND BELINDA WINKLER

Tasmanian artists Belinda Winkler and Kevin Perkins AM share a visual language centred on the contrasting forms of curve and plane. Winkler works with porcelain, bronze, and steel, creating smooth circular objects that are immaculate in their graceful simplicity, while Perkins is a designer and maker of furniture embracing the unique qualities of timber. Most recently, Winkler and Perkins have combined their work to create a series of objects demonstrating the harmony of these contrasting forms and how they appear in the southern Tasmanian landscape. {i]
Melaleuca #1 and Melaleuca #2 refer to the ‘genius loci’ of the rugged landscape and inlets surrounding Port Davey, South West Tasmania. The flamed fiddleback Eucalyptus refers to the black tin on the Melaleuca plain near Port Davey, whereas the curvaceous white porcelain forms that nestle within the valleys and inlets of the Eucalyptus landscape, allude to the distinctive white quartz that fringes the shoreline and rising peaks of the South West wilderness.
Artworks
Kevin Perkins and Belinda Winkler
Melaleuca #1, 2024
solid wood Fiddleback Eucalypt side table, flamed. 7 porcelain objects
98 x 195 x 37 cm (overall size)
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Artworks
Kevin Perkins and Belinda Winkler
Melaleuca #2, 2024
solid wood Fiddleback Eucalypt side table, flamed. 8 porcelain objects
135 x 277 x 36 cm (overall size)
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- Belinda Winkler
  Nestled #1, 2024
  porcelain
  2 parts: 13 x 13 x 13 cm (overall size)
  
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- Belinda Winkler
  Nestled #2, 2024
  porcelain
  2 parts: 8.5 x 8.5 x 8.5 cm (overall size)
  
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- Belinda Winkler
  Nestled #3, 2024
  porcelain
  2 parts: 8 x 16 x 8 cm (overall size)
  
  AU$ 1,000.00
  
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  %3Cdiv%20class%3D%22artist%22%3EBelinda%20Winkler%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22title_and_year%22%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D%22title_and_year_title%22%3ENestled%20%233%3C/span%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D%22comma%22%3E%2C%20%3C/span%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D%22title_and_year_year%22%3E2024%3C/span%3E%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22medium%22%3Eporcelain%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22dimensions%22%3E2%20parts%3A%208%20x%2016%20x%208%20cm%20%28overall%20size%29%3C/div%3E
- Belinda Winkler
  Nestled #4, 2024
  porcelain
  2 parts: 8.5 x 8.5 x 8.5 cm (overall size)
  
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- Belinda Winkler
  Nestled #5, 2024
  porcelain
  3 parts: 8 x 18 x 9 cm (overall size)
  
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- Belinda Winkler
  Nestled #6, 2024
  porcelain
  2 parts: 8 x 16 x 8 cm (overall size)
  
  AU$ 1,000.00
  
  Enquire about this artwork
  
  %3Cdiv%20class%3D%22artist%22%3EBelinda%20Winkler%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22title_and_year%22%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D%22title_and_year_title%22%3ENestled%20%236%3C/span%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D%22comma%22%3E%2C%20%3C/span%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D%22title_and_year_year%22%3E2024%3C/span%3E%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22medium%22%3Eporcelain%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv%20class%3D%22dimensions%22%3E2%20parts%3A%208%20x%2016%20x%208%20cm%20%28overall%20size%29%3C/div%3E
- Belinda Winkler
  Nestled #7, 2024
  porcelain
  3 parts: 13 x 15 x 13 cm (overall size)
  
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- Belinda Winkler
  Nestled #8, 2024
  porcelain
  2 parts: 16 x 28 x 15 cm (overall size)
  
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KEVIN PERKINS AM

In Tasmania, some simply call him the Master...

Kevin Perkins has a national and international reputation as a top designer-maker. His furniture made of Tasmanian timbers combined an earthy passion with a sophistication of finish, mastery of detail, and an eye for design.

Alternating between commissions and teaching furniture design have been major collaborations with architects, beginning with Robert Morris-Nunn on the trailblazing Launceston General Hospital Chapel, 1979, and continuing both with Morris-Nunn, as well as Romaldo Giurgola, for whom Perkins designed and made the furnishings for the Prime Minister's suite in the new Parliament House, 1985-88 and worked with again on the Parramatta Cathedral, 2001-08. Kevin’s work continues to be highly sought for by passionate collectors and institutions.

In Tasmania some simply call him the Master, a consequence of both a body of work seen to be peerless and a lifetime of teaching that has inspired many. His reputation reaches far from his island home and his influence beyond the parameters of the timber furniture with which he made his name. So coveted is his work that American buyers fly by chartered jet to Tasmania simply to meet the maker.

In consequence, he has exhibited rarely and his name - with the exception of collectors and makers - is nowhere as well known as it should be. Yet he is one of the few great artists Tasmania produced in the twentieth century. His work has borne witness to much that is wrong, more that is lost, yet at their finest. his elegies for a vanishing place and time transcended their own concerns to become objects of an often astonishing beauty.

Richard Flanagan
belinda winkler

An artist and designer, Belinda Winkler’s practice spans ceramics, sculpture, public art and design. A maker by nature, she is happiest when covered in plaster and surrounded by an array of fresh warm casts, each imbued with the tension and pressure of its creation and loaded with potential.

At the heart of her practice is the poetic notion of a sense of life within form. This notion rests on two assumptions; firstly, that curves projecting tension and energy are difficult to view with detachment. Such curves invite associations beyond the visual and the intellectual. They are evocative, and thus have the potential to generate connections, sensually, emotionally and imaginatively — they tempt touch, be that with the eyes, the hands, the memory or the imagination. The second assumption is that that the tactile dimension of these works is deeply implicated in these connections. A recurring thread within Belinda’s work is the relationship between forms, where curve almost meets curve, nearly, but not quite touching, creating a spatial tension, charged with anticipation.

Belinda completed her PhD through RMIT University’s School of Architecture and Design, and her work in public and private collections nationally.
i. Briony Downes, Art Guide Magazine, March/April 2024.p. 58/59

Photography by Peter Whyte

Bett Gallery pays respect and acknowledges the original First People of the region, the Muwinina, and recognises Tasmanian Aboriginal people as the ongoing custodians of lutruwita/Tasmania.