Herbaceous Order

Paintings - Oil on Canvas

Works on Paper -Guache and Drawings

Patterns and other Biophilia - Drawings on news print and packing boxes

Works on Paper

Series of Drawing and Details acrylic paint and charcoal on paper

Interior series

Here is work from the VCA Graduate exhibition 2008
There are more images and plenty of text on the MVA seminars page of the VCA web site.

These images are from my most recent body of work. I was interested in notions of abundance and preservation. They're a kind of still life or vanitas art, as digital prints of scanned flowers I had collected throughout the year.

I feel the flowers have been preserved by the scanner, capturing the minutest of detail and intensity of colour. Designs are based on Victorian ornate domestic fittings that cover many of the terrace houses throughout the city suburbs of Melbourne. I was interested in the cultivation of nature and how it is represented in architecture and gardens. There are also many associations to colonialism here for me.

Beneath the Empire - Flinders lane Gallery Upstairs

These are some prints from an exhibition in May 2008 with Ben Mckeown and Paul Kalemba.
Beneath the Empire is a group exhibition exploring the influence of Australia's Colonial history and its relationship to culture, identity, place and environment. The exhibition showcased the works of three Melbourne based artists from diverse backgrounds, who themselves are a Product of shared colonial histories.

For me I was interested in the decorative arts and a relationship to place and landscape. I took these aerial photos while on holiday in western Australia and overlay them with designs derived form Australian bush flowers that created beautiful moments of visual synchronicity.

Eden of Margaret Preston

Habitat of Fiona Hall

Garden of Olive Pink

Vessel of Lallah Rookh (Truganinni)

Abode of Clarice Beckett

The prints were titled after Australian female icons, all were pioneers of culture in one form or another. Their lives draw a line through a certain history that I would like my audience to consider. By following their stories we can explore a recent history of culture in Australia from colonial times up until today with a focus on, landscape, native flora, fauna and indigenous culture.

Review MCV
Lucy Elliot
Beneath the Empire
Tuesday, 06 May 2008
Upstairs Flinders Gallery

Beneath the Empire is a group show by three artists who explore the idea of ‘location’ in terms of nationality, imperialism and social difference. Each artist is interested in colonialism in Australian history how it has shaped their own identity.
For Ben McKeown, this has meant a self-reflective concern with his own Indigenous and gay identities; for Nicola Page it’s meant subtly drawing on her own experience of family migration; and for Paul Kalemba, an engagement with the environmental impact of colonisation.
A range of media including painting, drawing, printmaking and installation are used in the exhibition. Whilst the concerns of each artist are particular to their own experience, collectively the works come together to express a shared concern with issues surrounding social justice and environmental degradation.
Nicola Page has created beautiful prints exploring the idea of categorisation. The works consist of prints of aerial photographs of landscapes, overlayed with large, superimposed shapes. The pieces reference Australian women artists who have shown an interest in the environment and Australian history, with the connection between nature and culture one that Page is interested in exploring. Their titles are a kind of reclamation or re-mapping of place through the experiences of women artists: ‘Habitat of Fiona Hall’, ‘Garden of Olive Pink’ and ‘Eden of Margaret Preston’.
Paul Kalemba has created meticulous ink drawings inspired by the design of Australian coins. Each of the drawings takes an Australian native animal and places it in an environment that reflects signs of colonisation. The animals are displaced in time and place, with remnants of degradation surrounding them. The actual process of creating the works, which involves hours of drawing, brings Kalemba close to his animal subjects and imbues them with strong personalities.
Ben McKeown’s paintings draw on his experience of living in his traditional country on the west coast of South Australia, and his more recent experiences of living in Melbourne. The works combine traditional dot painting with abstraction to create a visual language highlighting McKeown’s relationship with location and past and present Australian history.
Beneath the Empire offers the viewer both a visually appealing experience, and the invitation to consider the impact of colonialism on the Australian landscape.

Digital sketches and photo collage

A Safe Space: Animation and Painting installation

The first stage of the work shown @ Horse Bazaar, 3.5 min animation

A Safe Space: Animation and Painting installation @ Loop 07

Animations and painting in the installation were created from this image,

exploring use of cultivation and processing of the organic material to create a design.

This work was initially created for exhibition ‘Geek Chic’ at Loop in Melbourne.
The exhibition curated by Alex Gibson, with the intention of exploring an interaction between analogue and digital art. An adaptation of the work (without the painted element, for practical purposes) was picked up by Loop and featured there for several month following the exhibition.

‘A Safe Space’ Exploring concepts of beauty through a relationship between analogue and digital art.

The installation is representative of organism and environment as one. The use of colour and linear form create space that functions as a metaphor for: surface, skin, ground, the face of the earth as they reflect the subconscious, emotional space we all inhabit. Mostly it’s the space that connects these inner and outer worlds. Forms appear and dissolve like land masses through subdued pink hues as mind, memory and intuitions arise into clarity from a subconscious sea.

Projected works are sight specific, light and colour are used to transform and extend the space absorbing the viewer. The environment becomes it’s own world contained and enshrined, a safe space.

A published review can be found at Un:Vol 2:1 pg 69.

Strip @ Red Gallery

work L to R by Bethanie Nichols, Nicola Page and Hannah Gatland

'Strip' at Red Gallery, with Yasim Holm, Hannah Gatland, Bethanie Nichols and Elizabeth Bryan and myself.

I curated the exhibition with five female artist of a similar age because I was interested in the feminine principles coming through in our practices. We decided to juxtapose the feminine them of the exhibition with traditionally masculine format of the monolith strips hanging down the walls. I felt that this presentation of our work gave the room in the gallery an almost shrine like quality.