Visiting Jayne ‘Tinks’ Southway’s apartment is experience, every room is a fashion statement. Jayne doesn’t do anything by halves. Scattered around the apartment are her artworks, creatively decorated mannequins and musical instruments– each one telling a different story.
Jayne tells us how her creative practice began; “When I was 21 I had ovarian cancer, when I was 46 I had brain cancer and had my left frontal lobe removed, and then I got breast cancer two years later.”
The artist’s tough times didn’t end there, a few years later her partner passed away; “I sat here in a black hole” Jayne said. When she did venture out, she found a home away from home in Perth’s LGBTIQ club Connections.
Jayne explains that a side effect of her medical treatment is that she now only sleeps a few hours a night and to fill up time she began playing with different artistic techniques during the early hours of the morning.
‘Blingpunk’ is the word that Jayne nominates to describe the style of her work, heavily ornate pieces that utilise a surprising range of objects.
This month Jayne will be presenting her work in an exhibition and one of the works will be auctioned off to raise funds for a local charity.
The show’s title ‘Seeing Squirrels’ is how Jayne describes her rapidly changing stream of consciousness to friends, as her attention rapidly flits from one idea to the next.
‘Seeing Squirrels: Art by Tinks’ runs from November 15-28 at Chrissie Parrott Arts Space, 4 Sussex Street, Maylands. Find all the details at www.artbytinks.com.au
