About
ART
I was born in Sydney but have lived in regional NSW and travelled widely. I am inspired by the natural environment, also using natural material in my work, but my influences are a diverse range of work, from contemporary Australian and Chinese art to my Irish Heritage.
Winner
2021 Waverley/Woollahra 9x5 Landscape Prize
Bellingen Works on Paper 2018
Finalist
Moreton Bay Art Prize 2013; Flannery Art Prize 2012; Sydney Water Earth Prize 2008; GOYA 2008 (Highly Commended); Pyrmont Art Prize (2007) (Highly Commended)
Solo Shows
BirdLife Australia National Congress September 2012,
Big Sky Gallery, Bellingen, May/June 2011
Dúlra (Nature) Tap Gallery, Sydney, September 2008
Commission
Solitary Islands Marine Park Local History Project
Group Shows
Desire Lines (with Janet Reinhardt and Sally Merrett) :Desire Lines #1 Balmain Watchhouse, Sydney, January 2010; Desire Lines #2 Bondi Pavilion, Sydney, April 2010; Desire Lines #3 Chrissie Cotter Gallery, Camperdown December 2010; Separations (multi media, with Janet Reinhardt, John Bennett and John Laidler) Balmain Watchhouse Balmain 2011; Natural INKuiry The Shop Gallery, Glebe (with Janet Reinhardt) 2018; New Year, New Art, Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery 2019.
Some other Group Shows
Nexus Members Shows 2010 - 2019; Bellingen Art Prize 2010, 2011; Caldera Art Prize 2010; Soul Food Bowraville 2011; Summer Sessions, Matilda Street Gallery, Macksville, Dec/Jan 2012- 2019; Worth Words, from China to Valla Beach Aug/Sept 2012; Bellingen Art Week 2013; Landscapology, Blue Mountains Visitor Centre Gallery 2013; Nexus Pop Up Gallery Bellingen 2013.
WRITING
Since a child I was encouraged to read and have written both poetry and fiction.
I completed an MA Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney, and was awarded the Patricia Hackett Prize for short fiction. I am a recipient of an Emerging Writer Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts, as well as a residency at Bundanon, Arthur and Yvonne Boyd's gift to the nation.
My Blue Mountains Mystery, The Crushers, was selected for the Queensland Writers Centre/ Hachette Publishers 2009 manuscript development program, and I have now published two more in the series, Orphan Rock and The Weaver of Blackheath. Another novel (currently in editing) Life at Sea, was forwarded to the second round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel of the Year 2012 ahead of 4,000 others.
My first collection of short stories, Short Fiction for an Absurd World, was a finalist in the Open Fiction category of the Eric Hoffer Award (USA) 2010.
The International Anthology of Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry (Lamar University, USA) included four of my poems and I was a Finalist in 2023 Newcastle Poetry Prize.
CONTACT:
www.bronwynrodden.com
Email: bronwyn2rodden@gmail.com
FAMILY
My sister Clare Antoinette Rodden left us aged 47. She was a respected librarian and perhaps, given the right conditions, might have also been an artist. Below are a few of her childhood paintings, plus an article from the Library Journal, InCite, and, as she had a great sense of humour, one of her on one of our 'dressing up days'.
22 July 1994 inCite:
Clare Rodden, who was Librarian-in-Charge of the New South Wales Public Works Library from 1984 to March 1994, died on 30 May.
Clare joined the State Library of N S W in 1969. After various postings to governmental departmental libraries, she became Senior Librarian at the then State Office Block Library in 1984. The ten years that followed saw m any changes to that library: two generations of automated library systems, a massive downsizing and relocation and a change in subject specialisation and clientele. Despite Clare’s strong belief in the unique value of a departmental collection as a significant historical record, she saw what could be gained from enforced change, and presided over a collection evaluation and downsizing exercise conducted in textbook fashion.
The library she left serves as testimony to her drive and uncompromising professionalism. It is regularly inspected as an example of a state-of-the-art government agency information service. Clare consid¬ered herself a traditional librarian, a library manager by choice but a cataloguer by inclination. It was the impeccable recording of the original collection that made the later changes to the library possible. Most of these changes occurred during the two and a half years of her illness.
An inveterate networker and information gatherer, Clare was a valued source of advice to those who sought her counsel. Her colleagues will remember her outspoken individualism, her perceptiveness, her relentless determination and, above all, her professionalism. Her staff will recall her supportiveness and the encouragement and freedom she gave them to foster their talents, those closer to her feel hum bled at the courage and optimism with which she faced her illness, and her concern for others in trouble, even in the days before her death. She will be sorely missed.
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