In seeking the texture of the text with Abbra Kotlarczyk.
Join us for a hands-on exploration of text and texture with poet, visual artist and Darebin Art Prize finalist Abbra Kotlarczyk.
Together we’ll examine how specific textures (surfaces /networks /structures) shape the way words are read and understood. We’ll then get hands-on with embossing, frottage, hole and letter punch and squeeze paper techniques. Exploring how these surface treatments can be used as conveyers of poetic and political messaging.
For inspiration we welcome participants to bring:
- Objects: to use for frottage (rubbings) or embossing (coins/ seed pods /jewellery etc).
- Text: A single word to a larger text of your own or someone else’s. Languages and language systems other than English encouraged.
Date
Saturday 23 May | 12:00pm – 2:30pm
Ages
Suitable for adults 18+
Cost
General admission: $20+ booking fee
Blaktix: $10 + booking fee
About the Facilitator
Abbra Kotlarczyk is a poet and visual artist of Polish and Irish descent living on Wurundjeri Country. Her expanded drawing practice is grounded in the foundation of paper: a medium & ideological substrate that she uses to interrogate questions of power, memory, story and inter-subjectivity. Her work is interested in queering normative stratifications of social & ecological relations that foreground human- and blood-lineages, often subverting conceptions of gender- & bio-logics. She has facilitated workshops and masterclasses in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, including at KINGS Artist Run, Gasworks and Victorian College of the Arts (VCA).
After the workshop, see Abbra’s artwork in the Darebin Art Prize 2026 showing at Bundoora Homestead Art Centre until Saturday 20 June 2026.
To plan your visit and for more information please click here.
Image credit: Abbra Kotlarczyk, Love Triage I (detail). Courtesy the artist.
For more information click here
