Wildēornes Body
time-lapse film 10:34min 2017
Wildēornes (Old English): a land inhabited only by wild animals. Wildēorness Body reflects the inherent loss and uncertainty we now face for the natural environment, while simultaneously being a personal acknowledgement of the artist embracing her mortality. Swathed in a Victorian 1880s chantilly lace mourning shawl, the artist lay on a large mirror that reflects the sky and the canopy of trees above. Through the symbolism of the mourning shawl and the endurance of holding a pose over time, Welch aims to reveal the symbiotic relationship humans have with the natural world, and the fragility and strength of both. Welch spent several weeks at BigCi artist residency near Wollemi National Park where she researched and created this work.
Wildēornes Land
Chantilly Wildēornes – swamp 2017
HD digital video – 15:01min
East West
time-lapse film 3:30min 2015
East West captures an antique mirror placed on the ground to reflect the sky as it transitions from day to night. Constructed from 3000 photographs taken over a twelve- hour period, the film acknowledges the sky as an enduring navigational device, historically used by humans to traverse the terrain of the earth from east to west, a tool to map, contest and claim. The clouds and stars reflected travel across the mirror forming a hypnotic sequence, encapsulating the recoded time (past), viewed in current time (present), while creating a space for contemplation (future)
Lament
time-lapse film 5:20min 2012
Lament records the deconstruction and reconstruction of a lit chandelier. Unlike my photographic work where the chandelier hangs above the landscapes of the interior of eastern Australia, making claim, here the chandelier is extracted, isolated and contained. The film records the deconstruction of the chandelier; each crystal being removed piece by piece. This chronicled decoding is a sorrowful lament and acknowledgment of the cultural and ecological loss that is now etched in the landscape. The imperial imperatives represented by the chandelier in the Illumination photographs are unravelling – crystal cultural threads are disappearing piece by piece. The reemergence and reconstruction of the chandelier in reverse suggests the relentless persistence of past ideologies on the perception of landscape and country in Australia today. Lament plays on a loop, cyclically revolving in search of resolution.