PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS - 2021-2023
MOONLIGHT
MOONLIGHT - VANCOUVER ARTS CENTRE
KINJARLING (ALBANY)// Western Australia
OCT - NOV 2023
Supported by the City of Albany and presented in the historic Vancouver Arts Centre, MOONLIGHT was Saira's first major solo exhibition.
The exhibition featured 6 mixed-media works on panel collectively titled Do You See What I See. Spanning 6 metres wide, this polyptych depicts the path of the full moon over a 2 1/2 hour period. The work is a commentary on the accelerated pace in which we find ourselves living in the 21st century.
Accompanying Do You See What I See were 2 additional works- See Sponge and Keep Your Friends Close [and your Anemones Closer]: aquatic-themed works making reference to the moon's influence upon tides and the unseen forces that impact human consciousness.
Drawing upon the ideologies of the Art Nouveau movement and 19th century Luddism, MOONLIGHT is intended as both love letter to our Moon, a celebration of the depth and complexity of Great Southern night skies (and seas!) and a lamentation of the perils of an ever-technologizing world.
In presenting this exhibition, artist Saira Ellen K. Spencer (Kwoorabup/Denmark WA) invites the viewer to consider the act of attention as ritual, histories as shared and contemporary technology as both a tool for the artist and a weapon we wield against ourselves.
They signify both the act of paying attention to nature in a technologised world as well as the act of using technology to construct a state of attentiveness. I was particularly interested in exploring how attention can be manufactured or constructed, organic or spontaneous, and how my mode of attention at any given moment impacted my art-making.
I was also wanting to explore how technology frames and impacts how we experience the world. In particular, how it has transformed our interactions with natural spheres- so often these days we engage with nature, art and each other through a flat, expansive black rectangle.
In presenting these works, I invite the viewer to consider how modern life impacts the quality of their experience of the world;
We all see the same moon. These works are the moon I see, that now you see.
IMAGE: [Left-to-right] Do You See What I See - 11:20pm , 10:50pm , 10:20pm , 9:50pm , 9:20pm , 8:50pm
Mixed synthetic & organic media on ply, framed . Aluminium bracing on back
[Full series] 6 metres wide x 1.86 metres tall
[individual panels] 78.5cm wide x 186cm tall
Completed October 2023
MEAN STREAK
PIA GAZE STUDIOS
HIGHGATE // perth cbd
Western Australia
JULY 2022
IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING
NICE TO SAY...
Made from a witches brew of paint-tinted-rainwater, graphite, charcoal, ash, sand and/or glue, and restrained, considered mark-making- the works in MEAN STREAK evoke the jagged edges of pitted coffee rock contours, the chaotic movement of startled emus and sun-bleached bone to create a series of a mixture of small & large scale paintings that ask the viewer to denounce “Good Vibes Only”.
Borne out of emotional entropy of weathering devastating familial grief, as well as local and global chronic crises; the works in Mean Streak draw parallels between the tensions and shifts that occur in a re-wilded world, with the inherent messiness of social and emotional upheaval.
They are an ode to pure frustration, utter fascination and the strange catharsis of surrendering to anger whilst lamenting those who cannot or will not do the same.
MOTHERS
MOTHERS (solo)
Intoo Gallery & Studios
Perth CBD
Western Australia
JULY 2021
MOTHERS was my debut solo exhibition comprising of 18 works on paper + 1 work on canvas.
Inspired by gendered expectations imposed on young women in rural communities, my childhood and sense of responsibility to nature, this project argues that imposing paternalistic ideologies upon the cis-female experience and our natural environment subverts both into the pallid and desolately surreal.
This collection also critiques the idea that a mother is strictly a cis-woman whom produces and raises children. Instead, I am insisting that collectively, we need to re- envision Mothers as custodians of the vulnerable, of communities and of our habitats.
In a broader sense- I am stating that, in Australia’s Eurocentric, colonialist society, the landscape suffers because we assert ownership over it whenever and wherever our lives overlap with habitat.
Each artwork in Mothers is a convergence of anthropomorphic forms and palette, paired with textural details inspired by the forests and wetlands of my local region, Gnowerumbup (35km west-of-Denmark).
Renegotiating the defined identity and role of Mothers is essential for ameliorating the violently abusive relationship we have with our waterways, our trees, our atmosphere, and our animals.