Heather Dinas

Having been brought up in Australia with Greek parents has instilled in me a unique cross-cultural perspective. From a young age it has fuelled my fascination with Byzantine iconography. Icons originate from a time when a great deal of the population was illiterate. A wealth of information and narrative was imparted through seemingly simple means such as: the gaze of the depicted subject, a hand gesture and the juxtaposition of the subject to background details and props. They can impose a sense of reverence, and solicit a delicate invitation. I have titled the first part of the exhibition ‘Icons’ because they evoke a sense of contemplation and like their namesake speak to us through the symbology of gestures.

I have often been inspired by the ambivalence of the sensual and the spiritual, the pursuit of our whole self/higher self and issues of female identity. Most of the following images are from my solo exhibition titled ‘The Virgin and the Temptress’ being the culmination of my Masters of Fine Art. The images depict a more contemporary inquiring into female archetypes in the Icon series. The Beatrice series uses Dante’s allegory as a metaphor for the many parallels that can be drawn between spiritual and physical longing. It is this dichotomy that has been a significant catalyst in my work.

The last three images are from my new body of work ‘The Hymn of Kassiani’. They are inspired by an intriguing figure from Greek history whose story I use as a vehicle to further explore issues of sexual identity.

Heather Dinas is a Melbourne, Australia based artist
To view more of Heather's work, please visit her website.
To read about her MFA thesis, go here.