Karla Dickens, Mother's little helpers VI, 2019, inkjet print reproduced as vinyl billboard at Incinerator Gallery. Courtesy of the artist and STATION Gallery.
Karla Dickens, Mother's little helpers V , 2019, inkjet print reproduced as vinyl billboard at Incinerator Gallery. Courtesy of the artist and STATION Gallery.
Karla Dickens, Mother's little helpers II , 2019, inkjet print reproduced as vinyl billboard at Incinerator Gallery. Courtesy of the artist and STATION Gallery.
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Mother’s Little Helpers

1 February 2025 - 8 June 2025

Curator:

Artist(s): Karla Dickens

Location: Incinerator Billboards

This exhibition, presented across three billboards located at Incinerator Gallery, reflects a growing rebellion over the silence and inaction of our country’s powerbrokers and general populace towards climate change. Through these photographs, Lismore-based Wiradjuri artist Karla Dickens highlights a rebellion often dismissed as inconvenient and calls for protest only taking place through conventional means.

Karla has been involved in green politics for some time now—she started with Greenpeace 30 years ago—and sees climate discourse stuck in endless repetition. For her, the focus must now shift to hearing Country—taking time to listen to the land itself and build a deeper understanding of Country.

In 2018, as part of the Kandos School of Cultural Adaptation project, Karla collaborated with Bruce Pascoe—renowned Indigenous writer of Bunurong, Yuin, and Aboriginal Tasmanian heritage, and author of Dark Emu—and Brendan Blacklock, alongside children from Bingara Central School. Together, they created the short film Mother’s Little Helpers, filmed in February 2019 amid extreme heat and nearby fires.

In the film, Bruce situates himself in the landscape symbolically and didactically as a messenger—one who represents Mother Earth. Wearing a long loose jacket with the large words Mother Earth Country, he reflects a call for men to adopt nurturing, mothering roles and show greater respect for women and land. The landscape—a scene of burnt trees, skulls, dust, and desolation—evokes death, while the presence of children introduces a flicker of hope. Cloaked with words like respect, listen, culture, and protect, the children embody the responsibility of future generations, coming together with Mother Earth as a glimmer of hope and possibility of spiritual renewal.

Silent yet dreamlike, Karla’s stills drawn from the film balance stark realism with a poetic edge. As she writes, “it’s the viewers’ responsibility to look hard, learn quick, and listen deeply.” The work’s title nods to the Rolling Stones’ song Mother’s Little Helper, hinting at escapism amid societal collapse.

Karla’s accompanying poem amplifies this urgency:
No coloured pills for mother today,
overdosing on crooked Bandaids...
Too late for flowers, hold her hand,
hug her tight, love her through long, dark nights.

Through powerful and confrontational imagery, Karla insists on facing this reality with care, respect and action.

 

Karla Dickens is an artist of Wiradjuri, Irish and German heritage whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, photography, video, collage, sculpture and installation. Karla brings a dark humour to her unflinching interrogation of subjects such as race, gender and injustice. Described as a 'found-object' virtuoso, her practice often places overlooked or discarded objects into new contexts to interrogate Australian culture, contest histories and agitate for change.

Karla has exhibited throughout Australia and abroad since the early 1990s. In 2023 her major survey exhibition Embracing Shadows opened at Campbelltown Arts Centre, spanning thirty years of practice. Her upcoming solo exhibition, Rise and Fall, will shortly open at Bondi Pavilion as well as her presentation within the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art. Recent significant exhibitions also include NIRIN, Biennale of Sydney (2020); Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2020); Monster Theatres, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia (2020); Defying Empire, National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2017); and The National 2017: New Australian Art, Carriageworks, Sydney (2017). Dickens’ work is held in major collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Museum of Australia, Canberra; National Art School, Sydney; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Karla Dickens is represented by STATION Gallery.

Friday, 31 January, 6-8pm

The opening night, with speeches and a Welcome to Country, will be held at Incinerator Gallery alongside exhibitions CHTHONIC CHORUS, From things flow what we call time, and A Gift of Cherry Guavas and Hibiscus Flowers.

Mother’s Little Helpers

 

The deathbed rattles

Reality has arrived

With an offbeat Heartbeat

Her veins die

Thirsty and hungry

No shelter to hide

Screaming and crying   

As water levels raise

 

No more coloured pills for Mother today

Shakes from toxic withdrawals stay

Overdosing on dollar making bandaids

Battered and bruised, sweating in pain 

The time has come to nurse her back

 

As our mother recovers she doubtfully looks

She feels connection - not blissfully but respectfully

A world where humans are brave enough to listen

An environment that builds trust in survival

Where money is not the hero

Another realm without excuses,

hate and cunning self searching gain

 

Stay crazy - for a minute longer

Imagine a sustainable future

Your heart full hope and an openness to learn

Where governments and those in power make change

With a sense of intelligence and childish wonder and principles

 

Lets keep tripping

 


Karla Dickens 2019