Selected Interviews
Scissors, Paper, Snap
Common Ground | Issue 01
Interview with Camille Serisier
A graduate of the Australian National University, Camille Serisier useswatercolour, performance and tableaux vivant to form distinctinterdisciplinary dialogues regarding authenticity and the natural world.She has exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions across Australia,and has been a finalist in the Duo Magazine Percival PhotographicPortrait Prize, NAB Private Wealth Emerging Artist Award and theHazlehurst Art on Paper Award.
In A Perfect Day, Serisier continues to explore contemporaryrelationships with nature and shared cultural narratives. Playful, pastelscenes are punctuated by humour and absurdity, with symbols frompolitics, popular culture, art history, religion and mythology dispersedthroughout. In Calvary, faces stare out from inside bare tree trunks,adorned in familiar kitsch sweaters; in Conflict Zone a man and awoman confront each other wearing shark fins and holding oversizedteeth. These strange scenes are initially sketched before being realisedas tableau vivants, only to be later translated back into watercolour;forming an ongoing exchange regarding authenticity in artisticrepresentation, and the passing on of cultural narrative.
Simultaneously delighting and challenging viewers, A Perfect Dayweaves familiar cultural symbols into ambiguous narratives.Questioning the authenticity of her mediums and artistic representation,Serisier successfully moves from painting to photography, playing uponhuman relationships within a landscape that has come to dominate anddefine much of Australia’s cultural identity.
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Scorch & Burn
Common Ground | Issue 02
Interview with Marisa Georgiou
A recent graduate from the Queensland College of Art, MarisaGeorgiou’s practice combines printmaking, photography, sculpture andperformance to test illusions and interrogate ideas of memory, mythologyand place. Georgiou has exhibited in a number of group exhibitionsincluding Do Not Consume at the Hold Artspace and Jalan-Jalan atQueensland College of Art Galleries.
In Georgiou’s most recent works Look Closer I, II and III, photographsof the Australian outback and bush are screen-printed using honeyand scorching techniques. The process is long and contemplative, withGeorgiou slowly building up areas of darkened landscape, while leavingother photographic sections to fade and dissolve into the white expanseof paper. The edges of the sculptural prints are similarly burned and torn,referencing rugged terrain, horizons or coastlines. The resulting worksspeak to the instability of memory when remembering place, as well aspost-colonial Western relationships to the land and the mythologies thatexist around the rural Australian landscape. These concerns flow throughinto Georgiou’s installation and performance The Transience of Memory,where vague and familiar landscapes are formed and projected usingsalt soaked cloth, being slowly manipulated by Georgiou over time.
Contemplative and evocative, Marisa Georgiou moves acrossphoto-media and various mediums to explore contemporary relationshipswith the Australian landscape. Using time and memory as a foundationfor her recent works, Georgiou’s practice reads as a series of shimmeringillusions, questioning Australian understandings of wilderness andpresenting our memories and the landscape as constantly changing,malleable and uncertain.
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