Jane Skeer

Jane Skeer, Sep 2020, Portrait - Photograph by Sam Roberts

Jane Skeer lives and works on Kaurna Land. She predominately works in sculpture and installation, creating works in response to her observations of people, objects and materiality. Skeer re-presents familiar ready-made objects imbued with their associated sensory/haptic memories, highlighting the vitality she sees in them. A physical process of assembling material en-masse allows her the time and space to inhabit, contemplate and work collaboratively with the material.

Jane Skeer primarily works site specifically, building installations experientially that modify space and comment on our past histories. She is fascinated with materials that come from the landscape; they wear the landscape embedded in their surface. She finds herself constantly drawn to regional Australia, emotively responding to these lived experiences. 

Jane Skeer graduated from Adelaide Central School of Art with First Class Honours in 2015, her work Quiet Square was selected for Hatched: The National Graduate Exhibition at PICA, Perth.

Skeer has been actively exhibiting work throughout South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia. Skeer’s calendar for 2018 was bulging with activity, from collaborating with South African artist Francois Knoetze, to activating the Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre, Mount Gambier. Skeer represented South Australia at BOAA - the Biennale of Australian Art, Ballarat. In 2018 alone, Skeer was Artist in Residence at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre and Loreto College, Marryatville and was recently awarded the 2018 Emerging Visual Artist of the Year at the Adelaide Critics Circle, 22nd Annual Awards for Excellence in the Arts.

In 2019, Skeer was a finalist in the North Sydney Art Prize, Pro Hart Art Prize and she is currently a finalist in SALA: The Advertiser Contemporary Art Award and the Churchie National Emerging Art Prize at IMA, Brisbane. She has also just deinstalled a major installation, her largest immersive work to date, Twine at the Walkway Gallery, Bordertown.

In 2017, Skeer worked at the Adelaide Festival Centre as the Artist in Residence for both, the DreamBIG Festival and the SALA Festival.  Her work, Flyers, earnt her the 2017 SALA Emerging Artist Award. In June 2017, she participated in a mentorship with the City of Tea Tree Gully - IGNITE public art incubator and installed her first public artwork in the main street of Port Pirie.