Wanda Gillespie
Wanda Gillespie plays with space, memory and time as she transports the viewer to an imagined or alternate future in 'Levitation Practice'.
At first glance the carefully carved wooden sculptures, wrapped in fur seem to be artefacts that hark back to a time of cavemen. They are a type of artefact, however Gillespie has imagined them to be artefacts of the future.
Pulling on your imagination and your grip of time is exactly what Gillespie intends to do. Playing with fiction, in her artist statement she outlines, “a visual representation of mystical practices, Levitation Practice uses wood carved figurative sculptures to instruct ‘seekers’ on a possible path for transcendence from the physical to spirit worlds. The exact historical creation of these figures is uncertain. Many speculations point to their being from around the 2160s, a time of great spiritual enquiry and reflection, when survivors commemorated 80 years since the colossal environmental disaster of 2083 that saw most of the earth’s human, animal and plant life extinct.”
Whilst grounded in time by their material nature, and situated in the Asia Pacific regions due to the specific plant life from Australia and New Zealand, the use of wood and fur imbues the objects with great spiritual significance.
Levitation Practice is the artist’s own ritual that she invites you to. In presenting artefacts from a future time, Gillespie invites the viewer to explore the possibility of alternate realities where all exists simultaneously and time is mere illusion.
Opening Thursday 29 September, join Gillespie as she explores and challenges fictions and ideas around history, culture, ritual and ceremony.
EXHIBITION
Wanda Gillespie | Levitation Practice
29 September – 15 October
MARS Gallery, Melbourne
Courtesy the artist and MARS Gallery, Melbourne.
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