The Kinkeepers

The “kinkeeper”, a term coined by sociologist Carolyn Rosenthal, is the one who holds the family together. The quiet organiser. The go-between. The one who remembers, gathers and smooths things over. A kind of everyday magic-maker.

Shaped by unpaid care, invisible labour and the quiet endurance of responsibility – what of its futility and exhaustion? And what happens when the kinkeeper is no longer there – who will keep things from unravelling? In this exhibition, Robyn Walton and Kirsty McNeil approach these questions from distinct but intersecting positions - to be a mother and to lose a mother.

In Robyn’s practice, housekeeping and kinkeeping are cycles that echo each other. The dust comes back. The work begins again. Her sculptures lean into the absurd, suggesting purpose but not quite delivering it. They hesitate. Refuse. In stepping away from their tasks, they hold space for something else, agency, maybe, or rest.

Kirsty’s work moves through grief, and how it consumes and lingers. Not the neat version, tied up and resolved, but the kind that stretches out, that resists timelines. In a culture that prefers quick fixes, grief can feel out of place. Here, it becomes a way of noticing what remains, and what begins to fall apart when the one who held everything together is no longer there.

Together, their work sits with what is carried, what is repeated, and what comes undone.

Image courtesy of Robyn Walton

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Opening Preview
Friday 24 April, 6-8pm

Exhibition Walk-through
Saturday 9 May, 11am-12pm

Curator Tour
Friday 5 June, 11am-12pm

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About the artists

Robyn Walton and Kirsty McNeil are graduates of Elam School of Fine Arts. Alongside Java Bentley, the exhibition’s curator, they have come together at different moments to work within a shared framework, drawn by a continuing conversation between their practices. Robyn, Kirsty and Java’s first collaboration, Network: This is not a group show, was presented at West Space, Melbourne, in 2017, followed by I Lean on your Support at RM Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau in 2019. The Kinkeepers marks their third joint project.

@kirstymcneil_
@robynpatriciawalton 
www.robynwalton.com