Deborah Kelly's Tender Cuts

Body of Work Study: Deborah Kelly
Deborah Kelly, born 1962, is an Australian mixed media artist who works in a multiplicity of areas, namely public art featurettes, sculptures, collages and political collaborations. Despite not producing any works that have been internationally regarded, Kelly’s cross-media projects have encouraged public discussion concerning many important issues facing contemporary Australia. From photographing cityscapes to street-level sculptures, her works involve exchanges between artwork and audience, in which she actively welcomes participation. Recently, Kelly has been constructing convoluted, abstract, collage-based works, and it is one of these works, from her Tender Cuts series, that has been selected for analysis, entitled ‘Encyclical From The Right Hand’.
Kelly often bases her works on social topics currently being looked at in Australian media, and regards the female figure as beautiful, regardless of size, shape or ethnicity. Despite focusing on topics that are widespread, Kelly also looks at less mainstream topics, as she sees it meaningless to move with the masses.
In a simple series of collages, Kelly is attempting to challenge every social issue of today’s society, namely expectations of the women figure. The work is evidently influenced by an abstract style, and Kelly has also said that she has drawn inspiration from the feminist artist Martha Rosler in the creation of her works for the series. The title of the series, Tender Cuts, refers to the precision in which she has cropped down each new layer, and also denotes to the sensitivity of gender expectations in today’s contemporary