Local Gravity Exhibition Explores Three Dimensions

The exhibition will present a body of work created in both New York City and Fremantle by Artist Carol Wells. It includes large backdrop pieces, a room-size tower made of recycled packaging and various paper and cardboard sculptures, suspended from the ceiling and walls.

“The title of the exhibition Local Gravity: unknown architecture comes from the fact that I have been living with cancer since 2004 - my sense of what’s important and why things happen the way they do has changed,” Ms Well said.

“Last year, while on a camping trip down in Esperance with friends from New York, it came to me that there is some kind of force in our lives and relationships that feels like a sort of personal gravity. That maybe we attract or repel the things and people in our lives based on the same force that shaped the universe and the planets.

“The architecture part of the title is about the way we invent structure in our lives. My Dad was a builder and a car mechanic, I grew up making things and watching him make things, even working on cars as a teenager.

“After completing art school in New York, by the late 1980’s, I began to create sets for low-budget music videos and gradually worked on numerous television commercials, films and video clips.

“All of the large backdrops in this exhibition were originally made either by myself or my crew. Backdrops made on jobs were often kept so they could be recycled for other jobs but by 2003 I had pretty much stopped doing commercial work and decided to recycle the drops into studio paintings. For instance, the blue ones were for a Levis Jeans advertisement and the black night sky backdrop was for an animated coffee commercial."

City of Melville Curator Soula Veyradier said, “Carol Wells’ work plays on the contradictions of what is real and what is made up.”

“Her years spent making sets and directing films and commercials have given her the technical and conceptual skills to make up individual, fantastic worlds. Carol Wells has carried some of these skills over to her own art practise to produce two-dimensional and sculptural works that question our fabrication of the environment.

“Wells’ use of unusual materials, such as set backdrops and ordinary cardboard boxes, create a universe with mystery and elegance.”

The exhibition will be opened by Artist Olga Cironis on Wednesday, 5 October 2011 at 6.00pm. RSVP to the opening by Friday, 30 September 2011 to claire.bushby@melville.wa.gov.au or phone 9364 5666.

Local Gravity: unknown architecture runs from Wednesday, 5 October 2011 at 6.00pm to Saturday, 5 November 2011 at Heathcote Museum and Gallery on Duncraig Road, Applecross. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday from 10.00am to 3.00pm and Saturday and Sunday from 12 noon to 4.00pm.

For further information click here or contact 1300 635 845.