Amber Koroluk-Stephenson

b. 1988, Huon Valley, lutruwita/Tasmania, Australia.

Dorothy, the girl carried by the storm, who has no mother, is given Ruby Slippers by a magical woman who drifts down from the sky. The shoes lie dormant until the final moment of the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy is told, by the Good Witch, that she can return to home herself, and that she always had this power, she just had to realise what it meant and how to use it. Dorothy returns home, yet all is not the same as it was: she has new knowledge. The Ruby Slippers are gone, but they will always be with her now: she has realised.

The power of Oz and its eternal relevance lies in the turmoil of sexuality and transformation found under its sweet, fey surface. Dorothy faces and destroys the monstrous feminine and discovers her own magic, seeking to return to a childhood she was trying to escape from. Home exists, but it is now No Place: it is within, and it is not exactly how she recalled it. 

Amber Koroluk-Stephenson deploys the complex implications of the Ruby Slippers to provoke vision and questioning of female sexuality and desire. Tinged with ritual and symbol, Amber’s experimentation with one of cinema’s greatest images of female power is balanced with flowers that suggest the nebulous continuum of sexual awaking and exploration, and shells that act as spaces where fertility and safety might be found. The suite of works depicts a changing understanding of what a woman can be, in a dangerous new world where all strength exists within. 

Home is gone, but a new one beckons. 

Text by Andrew Harper