Nell

My multifaceted art practice explores oppositional thresholds and the fertile spaces that exist beyond the binary: from intimate to immersive, found to fabricated, high to low culture, two-dimensions to three-dimensions, individual to collaborative, ancient to contemporary, sacred to profane.

This oppositional tension (and reconciliation) is evident in titles of the three works, On a withered branch, a ghost blooms, presented here in Pop Songs in the Desert for the Canberra Art Biennial. How can something be in a state of withering and blooming at the same time? How are both these things true? This understanding is borne out in the material difference between the delicate, flowing form of the glass ghosts with the angular and withered steel branches. Blacksmithing and glass-blowing are both ancient techniques of transforming materials through fire. I’m very attracted to that elemental process and how the utilitarian, industrial and artistic applications of blacksmithing and glass-blowing overlap.

Ghosts first appeared in my paintings in 2005 after a period of self-investigation and psychotherapy. Since then, the ghost has become a recurring, yet malleable subject and motif. I was thinking about how the ghosts of our past make us who we are in the present and if we can become friends with them, they might guide us into the future. My entire art practice is about the friction and harmony of opposites and I loved that this ghost form hovered somewhere between an ancient demon and a Pop culture descendent of Pac-Man. And that the ghost was simultaneously a little bit scary and little bit friendly.