NICOLE KELLY An Amorous Field Oil on Polyester 183 x 236cm Photo: Silversalt
NICOLE KELLY Lovers in a field Oil on Polyester 183 x 236cm Photo: Silversalt
NICOLE KELLY L'amour Oil on Polyester 152 x 198cm Photo: Silversalt
NICOLE KELLY Les Deux Oil on Polyester 113 x 88cm Photo: Silversalt
NICOLE KELLY In the space between Oil on Polyester 137x 100cm Photo: Silversalt
NICOLE KELLY Waiting Oil on Polyester 71 x 66cm Photo: Silversalt
NICOLE KELLY In the late Afternoon Oil on Polyester 113 x 88cm Photo: Silversalt
NICOLE KELLY Fall under the sun Oil on Polyester 66 x 78cm
NICOLE KELLY The Bath Oil on Polyester 113 x 88cm
NICOLE KELLY
3 FEB - 3 MAR 2018
TINF + DIANNE TANZER GALLERY
Fragmented imaginings
My artistic practice combines memory, observations and relationships to place. I examine how time changes the way an experience is perceived and retold, the romantic notion of memory, and how perception through memories alters our observations.
My process of applying meticulously mixed paint like pieces in a puzzle allows the imagery to develop like broken worlds pieced together. The resulting subjects are bathed in light and are fractured like adored memories of the past or a reconstructed world.
The work is memory and imagination based, with themes of yearning and loss, the familiar and grappling with a sense of place. There is a longing represented in the fragments. I want to celebrate the idea that art is a broken thing. An act of making it up from what we have and what we haven’t that makes the transformation possible. The eye engaged in the creative act in unison with a kind of not seeing.
I am deeply interested in place, and the tendency to construct imagery in paint which provides safety when feeling most uprooted. It is in this space that we draw from memories and construct half worlds. Worlds that piece together memories and dreams.
The paintings incorporate bodies and figures, finding a place within the landscapes of disjointed, dream like worlds. The repetitive use of two female figures in the larger works weaves a non-linear story of lovers. The story partial, a piece of something, a fragment.
These works circle the lovers experience and the lovers language. This reflection is absorbed into the imagery- real, invented or hovering between the two.
I am interested in the story telling told throughout religion. ‘Garden of Eden’ in particular is a point towards my own catholic upbringing, taking these stories and creating my own realities, fables, pleasures and fantasies.
I want to represent my delirium to myself.