About - Frances Guerin
Frances Guerin’s studio is located outside the spa town of Daylesford in the Wombat Forest. Her studio serves both her creative spirit and visitors who come for open studio visits, community exhibitions and meditation practice.
Her background in philosophy and transpersonal psychology lends itself to deep inquiry into human consciousness which informs and generates her prolific art practice. She began having solo exhibitions of paintings in the early 1980s in gallery spaces on Brunswick St Fitzroy and Chisholm Gallery at LaTrobe University, Bundoora.
Around that time she introduced art making into her counselling work and subsequently was funded to create the Silent Witness Art Project with survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. This exhibit was placed in public spaces around Melbourne and the Loddon Mallee region. She was funded by grants to run workshops with women in various rural towns and presented the outcomes at the Australian Department of Criminology and Victims of Conference in 1996. Subsequent grants from the City of Greater Bendigo were used to create a large art installation of women and men’s stories which was exhibited at the Firestation and Sacred Heart Cathedral Bendigo. Papers on this were presented at Loddon Mallee Women’s Health forum and published in various magazines. Subsequently she was invited to manage a tour of Tibetan monks who created a six-day Sand Mandala at Daylesford Town Hall which attracted thousands of visitors. Due to the success she then managed a Victorian tour of Tibetan nuns who were allowed to make a sand mandala publicly at Federation Square, for the first time. This was supported by grants from the City of Greater Bendigo, Hepburn Shire, Federation Square and various funding bodies.
In 2006 she commenced studies at Federation University with Neville French and Mary Rasmussen, a peak learning experience of pottery making, both in technique and its historical genesis. The elemental nature of firing clay is profound, unpredictable and as such an alchemical art where the transformation of various minerals creates a confluence with transformation of the self.
On completion of the Diploma of Ceramics, she commenced a Masters Degree at LaTrobe University exploring Irish Identity in Australia, in clay, drawing and sculpture. On her Wombat Forest property, she recognized several aboriginal artefacts of flint and a birthing tree which were confirmed by local Dja Dja Wurrung elders. This powerful ancestral presence evoked a series of revelatory dreams in Gaelic language of Celtic legendary figures. She then travelled to Ireland and found the ancestral home and was transfixed by Ireland’s unique contemporary public art based on Celtic legend. She was also struck by the contemporary Irish Famine monuments which have sprung up since the Celtic Tiger economic boom in the 80’s, in Ireland, -the USA, Canada, England and Australia. She made this the subject of her Masters exegesis and presented a paper to the Celtic Studies Department at Newman College Melbourne University. The figurine of the kangaroos with human features was immediately popular and sells regularly at exhibitions and through galleries. This shapeshifting figurine she believes, is a bridge between Celtic consciousness and the indigenous Australian spirit of place, and it is this that people respond to in the anthropomorphic kangaroos.
She was awarded a International Golden Key Honor award from LaTrobe and funding for Visual Arts Centre exhibition. Since then she has exhibited regularly at gallery spaces in the City of Ballarat, Castlemaine State Festival, Biennale of Australian Art, Toorak Sculpture Show, and the ACU Gallery Fitzroy, She has been short listed several times for Clunes Ceramic Award and the Manningham Ceramic Award, winning 2nd prize in the Glenlyon Landscape Prize, and first in Royal Melbourne Show for Ceramics.
“The exhibition created wonderful discussions through Frances’s story-telling and much joy from her whimsical characters. It was very popular with the local community, creatives and visitors to the region.”
Arts Officer - City of Ballarat
Amelia James - Creative Ballarat - Craft Lab 2022