Police Point Virtual Residency – Jemma Cakebread
Jemma Cakebread’s work explores the conversation between painting, embroidery and textile work through the surface metaphor of skin. She builds on the historical nature of painting as a foundation for work that explores contemporary ideas and themes through a relational conversation between these mediums.
For Jemma’s virtual residency, she aimed to create an ambitious, large-scale sculpture addressing the impact of single-use plastics and littering has on our oceans.
‘Recycled Whale’ 2020, still images and video
This three-metre long whale sculpture was created using fabric and recycled plastics to highlight the effect choices we make as consumers and as community members can have on the environment and natural life around us. Discarded plastics end up on beaches and oceans where they can trap and choke sea life. The sculpture lays forlornly on the shore, appearing to ‘breathe’ as the breeze passes through it. It serves as a reminder that by supporting a plastic-addicted consumer lifestyle we damage, perhaps irreversibly, natural ecosystems.
About the Virtual Residency program
Mornington Peninsula Shire’s internationally significant Police Point Artist in Residence program supports between 25 – 30 local, national and international artists each year. The program supports a wide range of emerging, mid-career and established artists, with more than half of the annual allocation of residencies granted to Peninsula-based artists to develop and foster their artistic practice.
In response to COVID-19 and in the corresponding interests of public safety, the Police Point Artist in Residence program was temporarily suspended in 2020. Mornington Peninsula Shire developed a virtual residency program to support the Peninsula-based artists who had previously successfully applied to continue to develop and deliver creative works.
