Jenny Pollak is a multi-disciplinary artist and poet, working across printmaking, photography, sculpture, video and installation. She began her arts journey studying etching in London, an art form she practiced and taught on her return to Australia. This was followed by a decade in which she performed as a flautist and percussionist, touring nationally with various Latin American bands, while continuing to pursue a darkroom practice of black and white photography, and initiating a new sculptural practice.
After deciding to focus all her energies on her art, Pollak's work became more project driven, moving fluidly between mediums. During this time she undertook a residency at the Electron Microscope Unit at Sydney University, and, later, at the Royal Botanic Gardens, seeding the ground for the installation piece, A Brief History of Time. Made from one ton of office paper exhibited at the Powerhouse Museum, this work uses the cut text of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species to create an imaginary garden beneath which lies the metaphorical weight of all evolutionary history. Her first commissioned work with Manly Art Gallery and Museum saw her initiation into video with a 3 channel video projection, and sculptural installation, The Immortals - a meditation on the future of humanity and the enduring power of the natural world to reflect back at us the nature of who we are and what we are doing.
Beneath most of what Pollak does lies a deep connection with the natural world, in particular, the Sydney sandstone country of the Hawkesbury River estuary where she has lived and worked for over thirty years. More recently her work has become focused on subjects concerning loss, particularly in relation to the environment and to climate change, which she considers to be the most pressing issue of our times.
The distance between two objects is the time it takes to wake from a dream, 2026, Ilford textured cotton rag, 120 x 90 cm
