TRACE 2017: BIENNIAL EXHIBITION & ART AUCTION IN THE STREETS OF 4101
Sandra Selig
Sandra Selig was born in born 1972 in Sydney. She lives and works in Brisbane.
Her work has over time investigated the fleeting, and the ephemeral. Using a range of media, including works on paper, video, light and sound, subtle works are created from commonplace materials such as paper, string, sewing thread and phosphorescent paint. Light and optics play an important part in her work as does the transformation and perception of space. Selig’s practice also extends to music, and she is a member of the electronic duo Primitive Motion. Selig has also undertaken a number of public art projects including in 2014 Echo Orbit in Brunswick St Mall, 2008 Continuum, Brisbane International Airport, and in 2004 Stray Lines Brisbane Magistrates Court.
Selig has been exhibiting widely in Australia since 2000. Selected exhibitions include 2016 span (installation) Museum of Brisbane, Sugar Spin: You, me, art and everything Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Gravity (And Wonder), Penrith Regional Gallery NSW, Kaleidoscopic Turn National Gallery of Victoria, Luminous, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Writing Art, Artspace, Sydney, 2014 Framed Movements Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Notes from the Field, Margaret Lawrence Gallery Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, 2012 Contemporary Australia: Women Gallery of Modern Art | Queensland Art Gallery, Ten Years of Contemporary Art: The James C Sourris AM Collection, GOMA, Cells and silos Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2011 be some other material Artspace, Sydney, New Psychedelia, University of Queensland Art Museum, 2010 Before and After Science: Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Zen to Kawaii: The Japanese Affect, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, 2009 Avoiding myth & message: Australian artists and the literary world Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, In the space of elsewhere, Stanley Picker Gallery Kingston University, London New08, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Handle with care, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2006 Paper Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth, POW (Personal Other World), Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra, Prime, Queensland Art Gallery, 2005 Primavera Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Temperature, Museum of Brisbane, 2003 Paper cuts, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne.
Selig has work in the following public collections: National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Monash University Art Museum, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of South Australia, University of Queensland Art Museum.
Sandra Selig’s work Interleaves 2014 comes from a suite of small paper collages. But surprisingly they tell big stories. The meaning of the word interleave is to insert blank sheets of paper into a book for notes or written comments. It also has a contemporary use relating to computer media, which is to arrange (an operation) so that two sets of instructions are performed in an alternating fashion. Strangely both meanings seem to have application in this work. The series is composed from pages of photographic images of nature and the universe removed from a journal The Violent Universe. Selig has used an origami-style folding of paper to bring these ‘found images’ together with pages of optically charged graphics. In Interleaves 2014 nature (perhaps a lava flow) is wild, turbulent and uncontrollable, and the accompanying folded paper in its flickers and flashes is also optically uncontrollable. It is a game of association and optical play. In some ways this collaged image could also be like score for music that flows, surges, pulses and flashes too.
