She the Ophiologist
Karenne Ann
She the Ophiologist [detail] 2025
Portrait of Heather Horrocks
Pigment ink jet
120 x 80 cm
About the Artwork
Heather Horrocks is the world’s only known artist who crochets old VHS film tape into art objects. Through our collaboration ISOyoh, we produce startlingly honest images exploring sociopolitical issues, and our work has been exhibited around Australia.
Made a Life Member of Footscray Community Arts Centre, Heather founded an artist-run space in Footscray in 2009.
Turning from drawing to crochet, a craft learnt at her grandmother’s knee, Heather has repurposed thousands of metres of black tape into faux-metallic objects of near-weightless fragility, including tiaras, spiderwebs, bricks, vessels, masks, regalia and—her favourite objects—the eastern brown snake. Horrocks’ lady snakes wear pearls and visit art galleries. As Heather poignantly observed, “They’re a protected species and I wish that were true for all women.”
About the Artist
Karenne Ann is a multidisciplinary artist living on Wadawurrung Country in Victoria. She has a Diploma of Visual Arts (Photography) from NIMT (now Melbourne Polytechnic), and was Student of the Year when she graduated.
Work by ISOyoh was exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ballarat as part of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, 2023, with over 60,000 attendees. Their collaboration has continued since then with Australia-wide success, including being finalists in the Bowness Photographic Art Prize at the Museum of Australian Photography in 2024.
Karenne was also the inaugural photographer for the F5 project presented by the city of Maribyrnong, with the work held in the Council’s collection. She interrogates the full spectrum of political issues, with a focus on the environment and feminism. Unwrapping, exposing, swaddling, scanning, modelling, and occasionally setting fire to objects form part of her practice, which is informed by historical change and spaces inhabited by complex memories.