Finding Beauty in Broken Things, an Aboriginal Artist Finds Recognition at Last

It was early on a blindingly hot Thursday morning as Karla Dickens, short, stocky and friendly, with thick graying hair pouring from beneath a fisherman’s cap, chatted amiably with her fellow regulars outside the local garbage dump. But once the doors opened, they got right down to business, scattering to rummage through mounds of junk.

Ms. Dickens, an acclaimed Aboriginal mixed-media artist, was thoughtfully at work as she foraged among discarded building materials, broken toys and industrial waste. She cast an expert eye over the sea of rubbish, not looking for anything in particular but knowing from experience that the right things “will come to me.”

On that day, she was looking for boxing tents or anything evoking circuses for a new work she’s calling “A Dickensian Circus,” which will honor the famed Aboriginal boxers and performers who once toured Australia’s rural regions. The concept won her a prestigious new visual arts grant last year.

Ms. Dickens headed straight for a pile of sporting junk and grabbed a pair of grimy boxing gloves, grinning triumphantly. Soon her cart was filled with stuff: a rusting firefighter’s reel with decaying rubber hose still dripping; ancient leather-bound books with disintegrating pages; a large disc of plywood; and, of course, the gloves.