Heidi Yardley

Heidi Yardley transforms found and self-created images into paintings of familiar yet complicated scenes and portraits. The paintings often play on nostalgia, memory and personal and cultural histories, exploring emotions such as desire and loss. The works become removed from any specific time or place but rely on the dialogue between each work to create meaning, requiring the viewer’s personal recognition. Associations and contradictions are at play creating the sense of a memory difficult to recall or the fragmented stills of a film. Recent work has explored the subject of the Supernatural including the occult, magic and ritual. Other works explore nostalgia and domesticity, particularly referencing the 1970’s and 80’s, as well as the ephemeral nature of youth and rebellion.

Heidi Yardley was born in 1975 and currently lives and works in Melbourne. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at Monash University in 1995 and Honours in Drawing at RMIT in 1999. Heidi is represented by Jan Murphy Gallery in Brisbane and Scott Livesey Galleries in Melbourne. In 2009 she is a finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and has also been invited to exhibit in the Self-Portrait Prize at the UQ Art Museum. Past solo exhibitions include ‘Supernatural’, Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane, ‘Darklands’, Stephanie Burns Fine Art, Canberra (2007), ‘Urban Myth’, Goya Galleries, Melbourne (2001), ‘Tethered’, 69 Smith Street Gallery, Collingwood (1999). Heidi has taken part in numerous group exhibitions including ‘Neo Goth: Back in Black’ at the University of Queensland Art Museum, ‘Exploration 7’, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, ‘The Land of Milk and Honey – Emerging Victorian Artists’, Adelaide Central Gallery, Adelaide (2001), ‘A Charcoal Sea’, Goya Galleries, Melbourne (1999 & 2001), ‘Invention’, Switchback Gallery, Monash University, Gippsland, (2000) ‘Silent Fall’, Linden Gallery, St Kilda (1998). She has been a finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship on three occasions. From 1996 to 2000 Heidi was an artist in residence and committee member at Roar Studios in Fitzroy, an artist collective founded in 1982. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the BHP Billiton Collection, Methodist Ladies College Collection, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery and The University of Queensland Art Museum.