Soft Hurts
Soft Hurts by Beatrice Buckland-Willis
Image credit: Beatrice Buckland-Willis (2025)
Artist
Beatrice Buckland-Willis is a Sydney-based artist, with a passion for all things
print. They are currently undertaking a Master of Fine Arts (Printmaking), at
National Art School, Sydney. Their practice is multi-disciplinary, combining
traditional print processes with experimental installation. As an artist with lived
experience of chronic pain, they are concerned with representations of pain and
subverting ideas of the ‘normal’ healing experience.
Their work has been showcased at art spaces including; The Cutaway
(Barangaroo), AIRspace (Marrickville), Artsite (Camperdown) and 321 Project
Space (Surry Hills). They have been selected as a finalist in the Blacktown City
Art Prize and Tatiara Art Prize. In 2021 they exhibited with the Other Art Fair as a
part of the New Futures Program supporting emerging artists. They are also a
2022 recipient of the Megalo Printmaking Residency (Canberra) and the 2023-24
White Creek's Cottage Studio Residency.Artist Statement
Artist statement
Soft means sore.
I am not in my body, I do not exist.
Managing expectations,
adoring everything that I am.
Soft Hurts by Bea Buckland-Willis acts as an investigation of representations of the body
in pain through the ritualisation and reenactment of performative acts which interact with
alternative temporal 'crip' spaces. They regard printmaking practice as an extension of
bodily performance.
Playing with traditional relief printing techniques, they investigate the concept of the print
multiple through ongoing material exploration with gypsum plaster. A material that is
durable but not necessarily archival, plaster undergoes a natural deterioration. By
casting and re-casting, curing and dismantling, this practice mirrors the cyclical and
unreliable nature of memory and the pain experience.
The artist is interested in the materiality of plaster due to its connotations in both the
medical and art world. The plaster cast in the history of sculpture is a duplicate, often
devalued and seen as an inexpensive ‘other’ to the original. In a medical context, plaster
is the scaffolding for the broken body, or a tool to cast a copy of something ‘abnormal’ in
order to correct it (such as a back brace or veneer).
Using the pedogeological framework of Crip Theory, which rejects modern
interpretations of Cartesian dualism, Buckland-Willis explores Margret Price's 'Bodymind'
concept which argues for the inextricable link between body and mind in how we
approach our understanding of pain. They propose an investigation of the rejection of
the medical as a framework for understanding pain, conversely considering their practice
as the ritualisation of pain as a form of memory. Crip theory refers to an emerging area
of study which incorporates critical disability and queer theory to reframe the intertwined
and intersecting social pressures and norms which can be found in both the queer and
ability communities.
Special thanks to Inner West Council for their White’s Creek Cottage Residency
program.