BCB 2023 Artist Talks - Rebecca Appleby

Every biennial, Award artists sit down and tell us about their background and creative practice. They take us on a journey through submission, selection, and presentation of their work. In this series, we look back at artists from the 2023 Biennial as we await the announcement of the Award artists for 2025.

Gaia by Rebecca Appleby
In 1972, British chemist James E. Lovelock and U.S. biologist Lynn Margulis developed the Gaia hypothesis. They theorise that both living and nonliving parts of Earth act as a single organism. This work is Rebecca's interpretation of this theory from the perspective of an artist. The use of spheres and hemispheres, two of nature’s essential shapes, echo the shape of the Earth and our brains. Rebecca takes us through her journey as an artist, which is full of stops and starts. Her work is deeply personal and represents her taking back control over her life and body. After the birth of her first child, her health took a turn for the worse, and she was in the hospital for over four months. This experience marked a turning point in her work as she processed her experiences with recovery.

About the Artist
Rebecca Appleby’s ceramic sculptures explore the notion of balancing structure and order, disorder and array, referencing the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi. Her current works take the shape of spheres and hemispheres. We perceive the earth as being divided at the equator. The north and southern hemispheres, or divided at the prime meridian into east and western hemispheres. Rebecca’s research informs a personal interpretation of multiple themes. This includes a holistic view of the earth and its hemispheres exploring the concept of ‘Gaia’ – everything on earth is connected.