Local artist 21-year-old Beth Kay is making her mark on the South East art scene with her inaugural solo exhibition ‘The Feminine Art of Mark Making’ on display at Little Blue Wren Gifts and Art.

The young artist reimagined the traditional shooting target into bright geometric shapes and then pierced each canvas with a gun to create the artworks over an 18-month period.

Most of the pieces were originally created for her School of Art Graduate Exhaibition at RMIT university in 2022 when she was completing her Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art).

Mrs Kay said it is her response as a woman and an artist to the sport of shooting.

“I did want to, you know, shift what people think about shooting,” she said.

“This is shooting too, it is not aggressive, it is not violent, but it is still shooting.

“For me my interaction with shooting has always been peaceful.

“You have to be in touch with yourself and have that bodily control to perform well.

“I just wanted to challenge the notion of the sport just being masculine because it is a very male dominated field.

“I wanted to say ‘yeah this is me, I am a woman, I am shooting, and I am making it art.’

Mrs Kay said the title of each of the nearly 20 pieces in the collection document what was happening at that point in her life.

“All of them are about a title of a few things that happened that day or at that time that helped me remember things and remember the shoot and all the emotions or thoughts or feelings or events that were happening at the time,” she said.

“I think there is something so beautiful about with shooting you have to be so present like you can only be focused on the task.

“It does help me remember which is beautiful because a lot has happened over the last two years of my life.

“They are abstract works, and they can mean anything to anyone in that way but to me they are so personal, and they have a lot of meaning and carry a lot of memory.”

Mrs Kay said there was a ‘really great’ turnout at the opening of the exhibition.

“It was lovely to talk to lots of other artists and other people in the room and hear their thoughts and feelings on it,” she said.

“A lot of them have loved to hear my stories about them which is nice, and I do love telling the stories about them.

“I think often people can struggle to connect with abstract art or even shooting as a sport but I hope this helps to bridge that gap and help people connect with it a little bit more.”