Escape. Control. Delete. by Kristie Watts

Escape. Control. Delete. In Australia, more than one in three women have been physically and/or sexually assaulted. Every week a woman is murdered by her current or former partner. Each blacked-out key represents a woman in the community. Each delete key laying on the floor represents a woman killed in the last year (2024). Escape Control Delete is a process and conceptual-based installation making the statistics of violence against women in Australia visible. Intrinsically tied to materiality, acknowledging the power of art and visual communication. Keyboards are an object most people look at and engage with daily, much like the visual landscape of people and places many gaze at daily. The array of blacked-out keys offers an unavoidable visual representation of words heard and reports read about the increasing statistics of women in Australia affected by abuse. The artist has recognised when engaging in topics that are triggering and emotionally laborious, an element of the process must be reparative for the project to reach completion. In this installation, the act of using plaster bandage to wrap each oversized delete key sculpture was an intentional act of artist self-care. Plaster wrap is both materially soothing and symbolic of healing and reparation.