Media Release: Raglan Old School Arts Centre, 5 March 2014
‘ATTA’
Friday 14 March till Wednesday 19th March at the Raglan Old School Arts Centre.
“Atta” is the inaugural exhibition of framed sculpture/bone art by Hamilton graphic artist Amanda Bennett. Atta has the meaning of soul.
Opening Night is Friday 14th March 6-9pm Live Music and refreshments available – all welcome.
Holding your first exhibition can be nerve-wracking, part-time Cambridge artist Amanda Bennett, 25, has discovered in the lead-up.
When it opens on March 14, she hopes people like her work, and how she has honoured the spirituality of the animals from which her work was sourced.
Amanda started working on the bone art sculptures last year after returning from a nine-month working holiday around Australia. She says she had been inspired at an “alternative” gala in Byron Bay.
Back in Cambridge, friends who were hunters supplied her with bull, deer and goat skulls and hide, while she decorated the skulls with carvings, mandala images and crystals; mounted them on hide, and framed the works.
“The exhibition itself respects the life of these animals – they live on through art,” she said.
Amanda has named the exhibition Atta, which is Buddhist Pali for “soul”, and believes the works make beautiful and original decor with spirituality and meaning.
Amanda, who graduated from Wintec’s Bachelor of Media Arts in 2009, works full-time as a graphic designer in Hamilton.
Atta opens 6-9pm on Friday March 14 at the Old School Arts Centre, in Stewart St, Raglan, and runs until Wednesday March 19. The opening will also feature Hamilton acoustic singer-songwriter Mike Sherger, and work by FeBella Flowers florist Caitlin Thorburn.