Q and A with Colleen Southwell
Colleen Southwell, photograph by Em Wollen.
Q and A with Colleen Southwell
We caught up with one of our all-time favourite artists Colleen Southwell before Heart Place, a new group exhibition with Skye Bragg, Georgia Bragg and Maggie Mackellar. Four artists with a shared history of common ground explore connection to place, the concept of feeling at one with a landscape, and the ways these bring us together.
Through their works in paper, silver and photography, and woven with the written word, the artists each interpret the land and nature as the core of belonging. The exhibition ponders vast landscapes with the minutiae of life they nurture, and the way these are carried in our identities and personal stories.
Heart Place is on exhibition from May 22nd through to June 2nd. Online sales launch at 8pm May 21st. We’ll be hosting an informal “meet the artists” Q & A with Graziher Editor Victoria Carey on Saturday May 25th at 2pm, followed by afternoon tea and drinks sponsored by Heifer Station Wines. We’d love to see you there!
The Valleys Embrace Me detail by Colleen Southwell.
Tell us about this new body of work, what is the main theme for these works?
These works reflect elements of landscape and the life within it that symbolise my connection to place – primarily the far western plains and central west – those places where I feel most at home, and to which I feel spiritually and emotionally entwined. I have used little paper vessels to represent the way I treasure and carry these places with me. They also suggest that connection to a landscape or place is often difficult to articulate - an illusive feeling or pull with roots and reason hidden even from ourselves, perhaps unlocked through story, experience, or something more abstract.
Heart Strings: The Long Belonging detail by Colleen Southwell.
What's your favourite part of the art-making process and why?
I begin with loosely scribbled sketches, but the final composition of the work is dictated largely by the paper elements themselves – once assembled they tend to take on life in a way, dictating to me how they wish to rest within a piece. Pinning is a process that can result in unforeseen outcomes, and the work begins to breathe. The transformation of a blank piece of paper into something with life and story is still exciting, an illustration I think that the simple often leads to the beautiful.
What do you hope our viewers take away from your work?
Pause and stillness, even if momentary. So often we step away from artwork to fully appreciate it, but I want people to move in and look closely. We are so easily captured by the big and bold, but there is a pure and gentle beauty in the little and quiet things.
Colleen Southwell’s studio, photograph by Madeline Young.
Held by the Deep Land detail by Colleen Southwell.
Colleen Southwell’s studio, photograph by Madeline Young.