Join arts photographer Chelle Wallace for the opening of her still life series exhibition The good room.
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The Good Room is part of an ongoing body of still life photography celebrating the beauty and vices in my mother’s seventies home and those of her generation. A play on blurring the lines between gallery worthy art and the informal art of domestic scenes. It recognises that despite the forbidden opportunities that plagued women’s lives they not only took refuge, but excelled, in the transcendent ingenuity of lovingly curated objects and outfits that became the focus of much untapped brilliance.
At a more personal level this series traces the broken and continuing threads I carry of my mother. It retells her story leaning on humour, and sometimes the absurd, to reveal fragments she thought should be hidden, and which now find a home in our shared search for something more truthful.
As a fine art and conceptual artist I draw on photography as the most honest lens with which to communicate. I seek to mine seemingly ordinary experiences for collective threads, and emotional content that can often go unmet. Turning the lens on my own beginnings as a daughter, has led to an ongoing body of work- The Good Room. Applying the technique of Tableau Vivant to the tradition of Still Life, this series of photographs depicts showy domestic scenes that both dignified and veiled my mothers lived experience.
For my mother, order and beautiful things offered visible testimony that she was rising above childhood scarcity. Her external search for worth and recognition, left me searching too. I am especially interested in family relationships and place of origin as the most powerful realm for recovering truth, welcoming back the parts we have split off, and reclaiming greater wholeness with which to meet the formidable conversations this world demands of us.
My fine art work has been selected in various prizes including-
Olive Cotton Prize Finalist 2021
Head On Photo Awards Semi Finalist 2021
Lethbridge Art Prize Finalist 2021/2020
BAM (Byron) Art Prize Finalist 2020 & Semi Finalist 2021
Australasian top 20 Emerging Art Photographers 2021
Australasian top 12 Emerging Portrait Photographer 2020
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