Exhibition closing Uplifted by Kerryn Sylvia

Thanks to all those that attended the exhibition closing on Saturday June 3rd. 2017 It was great to discuss the work with everyone and see something develop in such an intensive amount of time. The fragile balance of nature and humanity tinged with irony and unexpected humour. Thanks so much to Gallery F for supporting me throughout this experience.

May exhibition opening

Link to Mildura weekly article to support exhibition for Kerryn Sylvia's exhibition Uplifted 2017 running until June 3rd. http://www.milduraweekly.com.au/?p=5533

Kerryn is in residence throughout the length of the exhibition making new work that builds on ideas related to climate change, solastalgia and balance. Her work in progress area will slowly transform into a material based installation which will support the original work and culminate in an official closing to be held on Saturday June 3rd from 12pm-2pm.

Images of work in progress so far

Materials: paper negatives, frontage, projection, wood, water, paper, tape,
 transparencies, concrete, tree roots, drawings

Uplifted by Kerryn Sylvia

Exhibition runs from: May 11 - June 3
Exhibition Opening night | Wednesday 10 May | 5:30 - 7:00pm
Gallery F opening hours | Thurs-Frid 10-4pm | Sat 10am-2pm

Location: mim, museum of innocence mildura | 31-33 Deakin Ave

Artist will be in residence continuing on with the production of her work in the gallery space each Friday and Saturday for the month of May. You can support her by dropping to say hello and see the work in progress during this time. 

Artist statement

'Landscape has entered a kind of force upon me that is every bit as geological as family'

                             Tim Winton from Island Home: A Landscape Memoir

Uplifted is a visual investigation into the experience and the aftermath of uncontrollable and sudden weather events such as floods or severe thunderstorms and their residue, which can manifest themselves both physically and emotionally. A neologism for this is Solastalgia, a word coined by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003 which relates to one’s home environment when it is damaged or degraded; put simply it is the ‘homesickness you have when you are still at home’. The concept of Solastalgia also suggests that due to a greater frequency of earth related distress everything that was once familiar and trusted in our environment will be experienced as the “new abnormal” as development and climate pressures continue to build.

The title of the exhibition comes from an exact moment of being caught in a storm with my daughter, 100 km per hour wind gusts giving us the sensation of leaving the ground and being propelled forward. Both of us felt elated by the force of the experience until a large tree became uprooted and fell right in front of us. Our elation quickly turned to confusion and fear.

The physical aftermath contained in the images depict massive uprooted trees, debris along with flooded and swollen backwaters. My emotional mediation on these images saw them as symbols of my daughter leaving our family home to embark on the next part of her life’s journey and my own motherly surprise at feeling swollen and homesick at her physical loss from me. Literally she has been uprooted from me and lifted away to her new ‘place’.

Toy and handmade cameras have been used as a mode of image capture that plays with a sense of worry for humanity not taking runaway climate change events seriously enough to address our precarious existence on this planet but instead treating it more like a game.