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. “It all began when Kevin pulled out some fiddleback eucalyptus— a type of wood where the grain makes a pattern like rippling water—and we began talking about how if it was split down the middle, it would look like a valley with a river winding through it,” Winkler explains. “When we go kayaking, we come across things like swans’ nests, feathers and eggs, and these have really informed the porcelain objects I’ve been making.”

“We have also been to Japan and have a fondness for the reductive minimalism of Japanese design, so each work has its own space,” says Winkler.

Exuding an effortless balance, collaborative pieces like Melaleuca #1, 2023, combine the sharp edges of a blackened wood table with a series of white ovoid forms, each delicately nestled on the black surface. With colours reminiscent of the black tin and white quartz found in the far south-west of Tasmania, Melaleuca #1 pays homage to flowing waterways and the winding valleys they pass through.

“We have also been to Japan and have a fondness for the reductive minimalism of Japanese design, so each work has its own space,” says Winkler. “Even though this is the first time we’ve worked in collaboration, we’ve had this shared language the whole way through. It introduces new things to our practices in areas we wouldn’t have been able to travel without the other.”

Melaleuca
Belinda Winkler & Kevin Perkins AM
Bett Gallery
15 March—6 April

This article was originally published in the March/April 2024 print edition of Art Guide Australia.