Elin Howe

Born 1944, Sydney
Bachelor of Visual Arts
Graduation show: 1986
Graduation ceremony: 1987

Artworks in Space YZ

Never maul your patients or try to get right inside their mouths, 1986 
Mixed media on paper
55 x 75 cm 

Falsies, 1986
Oil on canvas
28 x 26 cm

Flare, 1986
Oil on canvas
38 x 38 cm

These works are relics from my contribution to the 1986 graduation show at Nepean College of Advanced Education. The imagery draws on my experience as the daughter of two dentists. My parents often discussed their work at home and to my ears their conversations were sprinkled with evocative terms which conjured surreal imagery to me as a child – cavities, gold inlays, crowns, bridgework etc. Their respective 1950s-style dental surgeries, which I sometimes explored covertly, were my secret spaces of dread. Furnished around the requisite foreboding dark leather chair, they were full of menacing anthropomorphic equipment like the articulated arm of the dental drill and the sinuous, constantly sucking spittoon. Once discovered, it became a rich image mine for me at art school.