THE FEMININE ART OF SHOOTING

Beth Kay

15 June - 28 July 2024
Margaret Scott Gallery

In The Feminine Art of Shooting Beth Kay makes her mark on the male-dominated sport of bullseye shooting in Australia. The artist has upheld a rifle range practice for some years and while having a love and respect for the practice, also bears enduring witness to the typical associations and gender stereotypes that pistols and targets evoke in the public imagination. 

Harnessing these conflicting energies, Kay began making drawings and paintings using the target design as her launching motif. These are careful reworkings of paper shooting targets that re-route the concentric lines of the design and confuse the mono-focus on the ‘bullseye,’   giving momentary pause to the primitive impulse of ‘locking in the crosshairs’. 

Knowing how or where to finish an artwork is a frequent source of an artist’s torment but in The Feminine Art of Shooting the works always end with a bang. Using the rifle itself as a powerful mark-making tool, Beth Kay loads up and delivers the end of each piece with a speeding bolt of lead. That surprising little pierce in the paper acting like a full stop at the end of each story told. 

OPENING NIGHT
Friday 14 June, 6:00pm
Free entry. Bar service available.
RSVP essential

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About the artist

Beth Kay proudly hails from the Limestone Coast where she has now put down roots. As the daughter of a graphic designer Kay was exposed to design principles at an early age, nurturing her creative expression through dance, before exploring her art and design skills at high school. Kay furthered her creative education in Melbourne, earning a Bachelor of Art (Fine Art) degree from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).

In 2021 whilst in Melbourne, Kay was introduced to the sport of shooting by a friend, who was instrumental in encouraging her passion and growth as a shooter. It was during an evening preparing for shooting practice where, upon discovering they had no targets or printer to produce them, Kay created her first home made target using pen and paper. She adored the bold simplicity of circles on paper and like so many creative breakthroughs, out of a necessity, Beth Kay’s signature style was born. This creative process lead to her 2023 exhibition where Kay worked with a vibrant electric pink and green palette to create sizzling hot colour contrasted shooting targets. Extending this practice to a new collection of works that take us through the entire journey, Kay now presents The Feminine Art of Shooting.

Image: Beth Kay, Before Dinner with Friends, 2022, synthetic polymer paint and pencil on canvas (prior to being pierced by gunshot).