Jacqui Driver

Jacqui Driver is a Sydney-based artist, working in installation via the printmaking medium of lithography. Driver is currently studying for a Master’s by Research at UNSW Art and Design, with a research scholarship from UNSW aligned with the project. Driver is a current casual academic, teaching printmaking across three institutions, the National Art School, UNSW Art and Design and Australian Catholic University.

Working primarily with lithography and expanded installation, much of Driver’s work responds to her own experience of unstable emotional states of grief, trauma, and anxiety as well as dealing with the physical pain of chronic disability, inviting the audience to acknowledge spaces of discomfort and non-conformity in order to a recognise a more complex relationship with landscape.

Since 1992, Driver has exhibited in an extensive number of solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia, as well as internationally. Her upcoming exhibitions include Luminal at AIRspace Projects, Marrickville; and Burnie Print Prize 2021 at Burnie Regional Art Gallery, Tasmania. Her works are held in a range of public and private collections.

#10 | Looking In, 2021, lithograph subsumed into silk. 1500 x 120 cm. NFS

When you suffer from a chronic illness, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, the repetition of pain eats away at your psyche and becomes an internalised wound, this wound then acts like a trauma which is forever present in your life, something you can’t forget yet  it also forms a permanent  hole within you, a sort of lack of substance. My silk lithograph has evolved from exploring this internalised wounding, the original lithograph called Sore Body/Soft Skin was printed onto paper, this was then scanned and subsumed into the silk to create Looking In. I am then able to twist, stretch, fold and drape this silk as an outward expression of my corporeal experiences.