Irrstern is a large-scale wall installation where roughly cut quartz crystal collected from the mines in Lower Silesia, Poland, are mounted on a dusty pink carpet; resulting in an unexpected juxtaposition of geological matter (rocks) and domestic material (carpet), two materials that usually occur under our feet.
The shadows of the rocks are drawn directly onto the surface of the carpet by simply changing the direction of the fibres so that light reflects at different angles, giving the illusion of movement to what are otherwise stationary, heavy objects.
Exhibited at tête as part of the collaborative exhibition, Mammalia, with Piotr Pietrus and in the group exhibition, The Presence of Absence, at Kunstverein Neukölln, both in Berlin, 2017.
Memory Muscle is the first outcome of an on-going project that examines the recent repatriation of human remains from the Charité Medical History Museum in Berlin back to Australia, over a century after they were removed. Using unfixed photographic paper, an image is created that never rests, that mirrors an exchange of objects and material, not only between Germany and Australia, but also between mineral and organic, the human and the geologic. Memory Muscle looks at how body and material are exchangeable; depending on where one sits in relation to history and politics.
Unique print on unfixed black and white photographic paper, 10” x 14”, allowed to fade in ambient light.
Exhibited in Ground Work (curated by Manuel Wischnewski), Lehrter Siebzehn, Berlin 2014 (exhibition catalogue available here) and in Shadow Sites (curated by Frances Wilkinson and Samantha McCulloch), Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne 2016. Installation photography by J Forsyth.
The exhibition, Shadow Sites, was held across two sites: Centre for Contemporary Photography and National Storage Collingwood. For the storage site a sculptural response to the curator's proposition was developed, titled, Rock Study I (2016), to be sculpturally paired with the series Memory Muscle. McCulloch writes in her catalogue essay, "the rock appearing in these images is laid on photographic paper. The paper, cut to shape of the rock's shadow, gradually changes tone. Memory Muscle proceeds as a series of shadows and traces of itself, constituted by its relations with both specific and disparate places and times."
Volcanic rock, unfixed black and white photographic paper, variable dimensions. Installation view (on left, at back) as part of the group exhibition Shadow Sites, National Storage, Collingwood, 2016. Installation photography by J Forsyth and A Weedon.
Constellation is an installation of silver gelatin photographs and sticky tape. A photograph of the artists' own back has been inverted, so that the usually dark moles and blemishes on her skin appear as small points of light against a dark, ambiguous surface. These points of light are joined using a ruler and ball point pen to create a new constellation, akin to the mapping of stars against a night sky.
Exhibited at the Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne, as part of the Artist in Residence program, 2016.
Standing Stone is an installation that transposes the marks on our own bodies into a large-scale map using basalt boulders collected from the Western Victorian Volcanic Plains, steel poles and sticky tape. Referencing the ancient Indigenous stone arrangements present in this area and the stellar constellations whose movements they trace, the installation crosses both the geographic and corporeal timescales – traversing the mineral to organic and the infinite to the micro.
Exhibited at BLINDSIDE, Melbourne, 2014, with support from Arts Victoria and the Victorian College of the Arts. Exhibition catalogue text, With the Universe at Our Backs, by Laura Skerlj. Exhibited also in HEAVY FORMS (curated by Ace Wagstaff), Rubicon ARI, Melbourne 2016.
Installation images 1-6 by Matthew Stanton.
In the photographic series Bruise the artist uses photographic paper as a raw material, exposing it to ambient light over time without developing or fixing it. In ambient light, photographic paper continues to change colour, at first becoming more vivid, then slowly fading, moving through hues of greens, blues, pinks and reds. This process of unfixed mark making can be likened to temporary marks of the skin; the paper bruises continually shift in colour and shape and are also the result of pressure on a surface.
Exhibited in Standing Stone, BLINDSIDE, Melbourne, 2014, and published in 'The Scenic Route #1 - Touch,' SLANG, Berlin, 2016.
Batholith is a site-specific installation of photography and sculpture. Using undeveloped photographic paper and sticky tape, a crude solargraph traces the movement of light falling through the west-facing window of the gallery.
Exhibited at Knight Street Art Space, Melbourne, 2013, with support from Arts Victoria and the Victorian College of the Arts. Exhibition catalogue text by Samuel Webster. And subsequently exhibited in Temporality (curated by Jessica Tamar Snir), The Attic Gallery, and at the Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, both Melbourne 2015.
Moon Rock is a 14 page limited edition artist book produced during the PICTURE BERLIN 5 year festival, 2014, as part of a risograph workshop with Yellow Magic, a Paris-based book design studio. It is the outcome of a collaboration between Catherine Evans, Ana Riaza, Siva Hamilton, Veronica Bruce and Melanie Irwin.
A photograph taken from the artist’s family archive is mirrored and repeated. Playing with the negative and positive found naturally with unusual markings of the body, this is juxtaposed against a small rock balanced on a kenzan; a bodily form, framed, that also holds it own blemishes in the pattern of lichen on its surface.
Exhibited at Platform Public Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne, 2013.
In response to the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand, a photograph of a woman from the artist’s family archive is juxtaposed with the precariously balanced weight of a volcanic rock and modified domestic objects.
Exhibited at Rae and Bennett Gallery, Melbourne, 2012.
Series of 8 silver gelatin photographic prints, 8 x 10″ each.
Exhibited in The Envelope: The Feminist Salon Residency, West Wing (West Space), Melbourne Central, 2010.
Selected early photographic work 2008 - 2011.
