Melbourne based artist Heidi Yardley presents a new series of drawings in her exhibition Shapeshifting, on show from Tuesday October 6 to Saturday October 31 at Jan Murphy Gallery.

In this body of work, Heidi Yardley has created a series of detailed tonal charcoal drawings based on digital collages created from found images. Representations of female figures – suggested only by their wispy cascades of glowing hair – are merged with carefully composed flower arrangements. These drawings become delicate ‘anti-portraits’, investigating the ongoing complexities of female identity and desire often explored in the artists work. Paired with these works are drawings of crystals, their organic yet at times geometric forms hovering ominously against dense black backgrounds. When viewing these works together we are reminded of the natural world as well as some sort of hyper reality – these ghostly apparitions seem to exist in a liminal space, somewhere between the tropes of traditional photography, Surrealism and the world of science fiction.

Yardley has been a finalist in a number of significant prizes including The Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, The Archibald Prize, The UQ Art Museum National Artists’ Self-Portrait Prize and The Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship. Yardley exhibits regularly in solo and group exhibitions and her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the BHP Billiton Collection, Artbank, The University of Queensland Art Museum and The Art Gallery of Ballarat