'Thanks for Nothing' by Rachel Parsons

You might think you know Rachel Burke. Perhaps you’re among the 200,000+ followers of her Instagram account, @imakestagram, showcasing her signature tinsel, tulle, and pompom couture alongside DIY crafts like pipe cleaner crowns, trash vases, and disco shoes. Or you may have seen one of her creations donned on a red carpet or mainstage; I’m thinking of Cate Blanchett at the 2024 AACTA awards in head-to-toe pink tinsel, topped with an oversized polka dot bow (iconic and just the right amount of too much). Since establishing her first brand, Yellow Cake, Burke has been anything but idle or one note (she is also an author and artist). She has a recognisable public persona alongside a successful multidisciplinary career. In our social media-obsessed world, Burke has managed to exhibit both herself and her work in a single space. She has found her superpower in being authentically herself.

But not all is glitter and pompoms for Burke. Running through her oeuvre of excess and kitsch is a commitment to radical honesty, to expressing her personal stories and lived experiences through the things she makes. Yes, these experiences include immense joy, love, inspiration and whimsy; they also include loss, grief, vulnerability and trauma, and it is personal trauma that has been the impetus for Burke’s most recent body of work, 'Thanks for Nothing'. After experiencing a “year of loss” that included multiple miscarriages and the death of her beloved sausage dog Daisy, Burke engaged in a year of obsessive making as both a coping mechanism and to combat the silence that surrounds (women’s) issues that no one wants to talk about.

Many artists, and I would argue especially female artists, have used their work as a mode of processing and translating both physical and psychological trauma.

Frida Kahlo’s many self-portraits project a lifetime of tremendous pain and loss. At the age of six, Kahlo was struck with polio, and later, at age 18, she was in a horrific bus accident where she suffered numerous injuries. These included a broken spinal column, collar bone, ribs, and pelvis, 11 fractures in her leg, and an iron handrail punctured her abdomen and uterus. Consequently, between 1931 and 1934, Kahlo had three miscarriages. Her relationship and marriage with artist Diego Rivera was turbulent. Kahlo taught herself to paint during her lengthy, bedridden recuperation period after the bus crash: Kahlo’s parents set up an easel and a mirror above her hospital bed so she could paint self-portraits. Over her lifetime, she portrayed herself again and again, simultaneously exploring, questioning, and staging her identity and translating the most fraught episodes from her life, including her physical pain and emotional distress, into art. Through her work, Kahlo attempted to make sense of and find some relief from and even beauty in her suffering, “The most powerful art in life is to transform pain into a healing talisman. A butterfly is reborn, blossomed into a colourful party!”

Louise Bourgeois created sculptures, installations, drawings and prints revolving around themes of the unconscious, sexual desire, the body, and motherhood, mainly influenced by traumatic psychological events from her childhood, especially her father’s infidelity, domestic aggression and her mother’s early death. Bourgeois’ personal visual language, portrayed spirals, spiders, cages, medical tools, and sewn appendages to symbolise the feminine psyche, beauty, and psychological pain, using her trauma as raw material in the creation of her emotionally charged artwork. She was not afraid to depict taboo subjects or shy away from the abject; for her, an artist’s integrity was not diverging away from the truth, “an artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.”

'My Bed' (1999) by Tracy Emin is still one of the artist’s most revered and reviled artworks. A process of directly making art from life, the work consists of a bed, rumpled and stained sheets, piles of junk, empty bottles of vodka, dirty slippers, cartons of cigarettes, a pair of panties soiled with menstrual blood, a container of birth control pills, condoms, etc. The work is so ‘real’ that a museum guard mistakenly tidied the installation, thinking it had been vandalised. 'My Bed' gives the viewer immediate and intimate access to Emin’s life during a time of debilitating depression. The work is autobiographical, confessional, and vulnerable and speaks to the female body and mind as it fails to live up to polite social and even self-expectations. All of Emin’s work draws from her personal experience, and most acknowledge trauma, poverty, rape, abortion, relationships, and death; everything is up for grabs, and Emin seems to hold nothing back. Over the past three decades, her work has been captivatingly candid, brash, shocking, tender, and heartbreaking. For Emin, making art has been an act of survival, resilience and acceptance, “I’ve killed my shame; I’ve hung it on the walls.”

Emin’s work especially inspires Burke, and there are a number of observable similarities from their shared use of language, the adoption of materials and techniques that may be understood as feminine, crafty or low-brow, and catharsis that both artists feel through the process of making. It may feel befuddling to reconcile Burke’s dopamine-infused fashionista persona as being aligned with the deeply layered and sometimes brutally confronting work we expect from Emin, but don’t be fooled; pretty can be a trap.

The artworks in Thanks for Nothing are made from over half a million de-stashed and thrifted melty beads. While melty beads were used briefly as a therapy activity for the elderly in the 1960s, they are recognised mainly as a children’s game or craft activity for creating colourful pixel art. It is not surprising that Burke would use melty beads in her work; they join tinsel, wool, pipe cleaners, recycled cardboard and glitter as the standard craft-based materials that Burke is generally drawn to. What is different in this instance is their deeply personal significance. After being told by her Dr that she would be miscarrying for a second time and to expect a relatively minor physical effect (the equivalent of a standard period), Burke found herself in the melty bead craft aisle of a store, feeling the in no way insignificant physical and emotional impact of losing a pregnancy. This became a key moment of trauma for Burke, yet it was also the place where she found a means for processing her grief, shame and anger. Melty beads presented a tool for healing. Through the labour-intensive and repetitive action of compiling words and images from melty beads, Burke could zone out, creating a mental safe space to reflect on and process everything that had happened to her and everything she was feeling. Like Kahlo, Bourgeois and Emin, Burke translated her trauma into her artwork, navigating her vulnerability and coming out the other side, ready to talk about it all openly and loudly.

In a series of colourful and cutesy handbags, Burke inscribes words and phrases like “little miss carrier”, “empty”, “emotional”, and “old”. The text announces various states of being that Burke experienced during her year of loss, giving what would be well-meaning friends and acquaintances a clue to how she is feeling. The work finds humour and is even light-hearted, in the vein of laughing so that you don’t cry.

Handbags often function for women as a kind of security blanket or shield, something to hold in front of you in public situations (somewhere to stash your pepper spray). Symbolically, baggage speaks to the unspoken mental and emotional load one carries with them; physically, bags provide a cavity, an internal space, a womb.

In 'The Many Faces of…' series, Burke has created 28 pixelated faces that express a spectrum of emotions. The number 28 is symbolically important, representing Burke’s standard menstrual cycle. The work reads like a menstruation diary, a standard for many to record daily notations of their emotional and physical state. “How are you feeling today?” 🙁

In my conversation with Burke, she speaks about periods of mania she experienced, frantically taking pregnancy tests, the volatile highs and lows, the inadequacy of the medical profession’s ability to acknowledge and support the individual’s experience as they traverse the happiest and most tragic moments of their lives. Yes, these are common occurrences that women universally face, but when it is your turn, it can feel so intensely your own and so overwhelmingly isolating.

Burke’s anger towards the medical system’s treatment of women is an undercurrent throughout the exhibition. The title work, 'Thanks for Nothing', alludes to their downplaying of the reality of her situation as someone who had lost multiple pregnancies. Burke was told that she could still travel, fly, exercise, and live her life. She trusted the advice she was given yet continued to have miscarriages and still has no medical explanation as to why. She felt she was being gaslighted, managed, and patronised under a cloak of kindness and platitudes. At the same time, her own body failed her. We are told (brainwashed) that pregnancy is the most natural thing in the world and the ultimate goal for a woman, and yet, despite all the effort and care, Burke’s body did not live up to its end of the bargain. Irrationally, but also commonly, Burke felt shame in herself and her body in light of its perceived failure. In making this work, Burke, like Emin, recontextualises her loss and shame, making it visible and creating space for trauma that society tells us not to talk about.

During the same period, Burke’s dog Daisy passed away. As a fellow obsessed dog mother, I can fully relate to the immense desolation one feels when losing a pet. No other love we experience is as effortless and easy as the love we share with animals, and no grief is as uncomplicated and pure as when we lose them. 'Daisy Veil' speaks to this particular grief. Taking the form of a beaded curtain, the work evokes a shroud or portal, something that guards or transports through memory.

All of this in melty beads.

The work’s aesthetic is quintessential Rachel Burke: colourful, crafty, feminine, pretty. And why not? Despite all that she experienced during her year of loss, Burke is still the same person, and she applies the same lexicon of visual language to this work. For Burke, the colour of grief isn’t black; there is space for humour and beauty within trauma. The hidden thing under the seductiveness of plastic colour and whimsy is her personal experience laid bare and made tangible; it is in this space of open vulnerability where real and vital conversations may flow. It is not an easy thing to be so open and honest, especially in such a public way, but it is only through talking about these issues and bringing them to the foreground that we have any hope of inciting change and making things better.

Rachael Parsons

About the Curator

Laura Brinin

Laura Brinin is a curator of contemporary art, currently facilitating the vibrant program at Side Gallery in the heart of Red Hill, Brisbane. With an unwavering passion for nurturing connections with emerging and established creatives, Laura is dedicated to fostering artistic growth through avenues such as social media, branding, and identity development.

Laura has exhibited her own work both in Australia and overseas, as well as working as an independent freelance curator across Brisbane for over ten years. In her downtime, you can find her reading, travelling, or stalking dogs.

—   laura@sidegallery.com.au