Linde Ivimey

Linde Ivimey is a sculptor of uncommon originality. Working with found materials – bone, fabric, wax, metal, hair – Ivimey creates powerful figurative sculptures that are equal parts raw, tender and deeply personal. Her practice draws on a wide skill set that includes welding, carving, sewing and taxidermy, resulting in works that feel both ancient and immediate.

Ivimey’s figures, often built around steel armatures, explore themes of identity, resilience, memory and transformation. Her materials – at times unsettling – are handled with care and reverence, always in service of storytelling. Autobiographical elements frequently run through her work, including experiences of illness, recovery and emotional endurance.

Since emerging in the early 2000s, Ivimey has exhibited widely across Australia and internationally. Major solo exhibitions include Close to the Bone at Heide Museum of Modern Art (2003) and If Pain Persists at the University of Queensland Art Museum (2012), which coincided with the publication of the artist’s most monograph by the University of Queensland in 2012.

“In its day, the Melbourne Art Fair was staged in the Victorian ‘wedding cake’ grandeur of the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton – a structure so decoratively immense it could at times overwhelm the art within,” says Michael Reid OAM, recalling an early encounter with Ivimey’s work. “Yet in 2004, amid all this intricate splendour, the primal, breathtakingly original sculptures of Linde Ivimey – one of Australia’s most distinctive contemporary sculptors, celebrated nationally and internationally for works that fuse intricate craftsmanship with an unflinching exploration of the human condition – shone through. That moment remains vivid in my memory, for the emotion of great art endures.”

Ivimey’s sculptures are held in major public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, University of Queensland Art Museum, Rockhampton Museum of Art, Newcastle City Art Gallery, Wanneroo City Council, Western Australia School of Art, Design & Media, and the Reydan Weiss Collection, as well as important private collections in Australia, Germany and New Zealand.