Beanie Aldrett Fleming

<p class=”p1″>Beanie Aldrett Fleming born 1994, is a Mexican and English, Sydney based visual artist that lives and works on unceded Gadigal Land. She began handbuilding classes in 2018 taught by ceramisist aunt Kerry Cook where she discovered a passion for the medium, inspiring her to pursue a Bachelor of fine arts from the National Arts School in 2020. During graduation in 2022 she won the Kil.n.It prize and is now a Studio Artist at Kil.n.it in Glebe. She has exhibited at Lowe and Lee Gallery (formally Kerrie Lowe) earlier this year and is looking forward to participating in a group show with Kil.n.it at Michael Reid Clay in October, Saywell Gallery in October, and Curitorial+Co in December 2023. She is also a finalist in the Little Things Art Prize 2023 and had her work featured in The Journal of Australian Ceramics, July issue, 2023. Aldrett Fleming immigrated to Sydney, Australia in 2006 from Brighton, UK growing up culturally ambiguous until a trip to Mexico in 2010 where she established a connection to her Mexican heritage. She primarily works in ceramics to create vibrant and dynamic sculptural forms that express her journey and desire to understand, acknowledge and celebrate the intersection of her multiple cultural identities and the effects immigration, globalisation and culture have on her perception of her own identity, and belonging.</p>
<p class=”p1″>Beanie Aldrett Fleming’s Cerro De San Pedro Series is a sculptural representation of the lines that divide her cultural identities merging, responding and reacting to each other. Growing up in Brighton, UK and immigrating to Sydney, Australia in 2006 she felt disconnected from her Mexican heritage which left her feeling culturally ambiguous and displaced. She draws upon an evolving visual language that explores the intersection of her and her Mexican heritage through the abstraction and layering of personally significant symbols of culture, family, and place; such as the vibrant colours of traditional Mexican folk art aesthetic. Aldrett Fleming contrasts these with the neutral tones of different combinations of marbled white, red and black clay bodies reminiscent of the arid landscapes found in San Luis Potosi, in the north-eastern part of central Mexico, where she is from. The rocky, arid hills of the small mining town of Cerro De San Pedro, in San Luis Potosi, are scooped out and inverted, creating empty wells much like the effects of internationally owned mines in the local area. Aldrett Fleming then encrusts them with vividly coloured, gem like abstractions of the Mexican folk art that fills her fathers’ hotel and home.. The rhythmic, tactile nature of the clay and the hand of the artist is present through the handbuilt, chalice-like forms, representative of the catholic traditions now embraced in post-colonial Mexico. At the centre of the work precariously stacked boulders are in a constant balancing act between the foundation and the heavy top, symbolic of Aldrett Fleming’s complicated relationship to belonging, her experience of immigration and the contradictions of her multicultural identity. Aldrett Fleming sees the Cerro De San Pedro Series as a colourful, dynamic, shrine-like celebration and acknowledgment of her desire to connect and belong, an experience she believes is shared by all in this globalised world we live in today.</p>