Stephanie Corthorne - Rental Panic

Rental Panic’s defining feature is its handmade paper beads, made from my own old lease documents. As a long-term tenant, I am accustomed to moving about every few years, not able to put roots down anywhere long term due to increasing demands upon the housing market. Now, in one of the world’s longest covid-19 lockdowns, and with the eviction moratorium ended in March, the oppressive atmosphere pressed upon tenants is worse than ever.

2019, sterling silver, brass, copper, agate beads, lease documents crushed into balls, waxed cord, approx 40cm.

Artist: Stephanie Corthorne

My name is Stephanie, and I'm a jewellery and object artist, an image maker, an illustrator, a collector of discarded things, and a mushroom-fancier.

As an artist my goal is to create works that are transcendental and immanent; my art is at both times monumental and micro. In my expanded art and jewellery practice I draw on the rich palette of shapes and textures in surrounding landscapes, discarded objects and reclaimed materials, transforming them with colour and scale to create work that blurs the lines between ‘wearable’ and ‘unwearable’.

I aim to probe the role of jewellery and objects in attachment, suffering, identity, and relationships. My enquiries emerge from my ongoing reckonings with dualistic tensions and questions of constructions of identity in post-colonial Australia.

My personal values relating to environmentalism and deep ecology push me to explore new methods of creating using my ever-growing collection of found and recycled material. I utilize collecting, alteration, and re-contextualisation to evoke and inscribe new narratives. I juxtapose high and low, pop and grit, old and new, in my journey to create new worlds within my art.

I live and work in Footscray on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri People, who I acknowledge as the traditional custodians of the land.

Instagram: stephanierachael_