Troy Emery
Troy Emery is an artist based in Melbourne and has an art practice encompassing sculpture, painting, and drawing. He works primarily with textiles in a sculptural practice to produce animal-like forms. His artwork examines the discourse surrounding the delineation between fine arts and craft, as well as animals as both entrenched decorative motifs and tokens of ecological ruination.
TROY EMERY | INSTALLATION
Between leaving his regional hometown of Toowoomba and moving to Hobart to attend art school, Troy Emery decided he wanted to study fashion. Then he discovered he didn’t.
Following his instincts, he dropped out of fashion school, but took his love of textiles and haberdashery with him. ‘I’d never really considered the possibility of regularly exhibiting art like this and being able to fund the next project through selling work, but it has managed to play out that way,’ Troy explains.
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The artist’s Brunswick studio doubles as an ‘awkward craft materials’ armoury, filled with tassels, fringing, tinsel and pom poms – in fact, he once ordered 280,000 pom poms, and is still putting them to captivating use! ‘I think these decorative materials can become unsettling when used excessively,’ explains the artist, who has a penchant for the lurid colours of these kitch details.
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The artist’s latest pieces are monochrome – with animal forms disappearing under solid black, or a long heavy pelt of pearlescent pink camouflage – in comparison to his earlier pieces, which were each dominated by a cacophony of colour and mesmerising patterns.
His work, however, is much deeper than a surface of quirky textures. Physically, through his use of unexpected materials, Troy tries to obscure recognisable forms, while conceptually, he works to provoke ideas about our historical relationship with animals, underpinned by our assumed position of authority in the natural world.
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Following his instincts, he dropped out of fashion school, but took his love of textiles and haberdashery with him. ‘I’d never really considered the possibility of regularly exhibiting art like this and being able to fund the next project through selling work, but it has managed to play out that way,’ Troy explains.
The artist’s Brunswick studio doubles as an ‘awkward craft materials’ armoury, filled with tassels, fringing, tinsel and pom poms – in fact, he once ordered 280,000 pom poms, and is still putting them to captivating use! ‘I think these decorative materials can become unsettling when used excessively,’ explains the artist, who has a penchant for the lurid colours of these kitch details.
The artist’s latest pieces are monochrome – with animal forms disappearing under solid black, or a long heavy pelt of pearlescent pink camouflage – in comparison to his earlier pieces, which were each dominated by a cacophony of colour and mesmerising patterns.
His work, however, is much deeper than a surface of quirky textures. Physically, through his use of unexpected materials, Troy tries to obscure recognisable forms, while conceptually, he works to provoke ideas about our historical relationship with animals, underpinned by our assumed position of authority in the natural world.
