Venus Disrupted I to XIV

Venus Disrupted I to XIV, 2022.  
Screen Print on Canvas, mounted on Board.
500cm x 400cm x 4cm
Exhibitred as part of Divergent Terrain, Old Customs House
(Artsource) Fremantle, 2022.
 
Venus Disrupted I to XIV imagines an ‘Everywhen’ of the
artist Kelsey Ashe’s lived and imagined Ancestral
territories. It is a dreamscape where multiple places
exist at once, and the future and the past sit side by side.
Recognisable landforms from Tasmania, Polynesia,
Scotland and the Faroe Islands can be found in this
terrain and Venus is observed in her eternal loop across
the horizon.
Rocky caves appear to grow seaweed, so perhaps too,
we are underwater, as well as above. That this
landscape should be ‘disrupted’, ‘broken up’ and ‘sold
off’ is metaphorical of our modern day society which
dissects land, sets boundaries and claims territories in a
form of ownership we cannot seem to escape.
Artist Kelsey Ashe draws landscape images directly onto
Wax Coated Etching sheets. These drawings are then
turned into Silk Screen Stencils and hand-printed onto
raw canvas with Botanical Inks made from the ancient
and resilient dyes of Indigo and Myrolaban.
Ashe has developed contemporary forms of Japanese
Textile printing techniques that use various resins, waxes,
and inks to build up the large scale image. Each print
has individual ‘decalcomania’ marks that are part of the
process of working with natural dyes and print.