Donna Wright: Push Pull, 2021. Mixed media on linen
By Ellen Hubble
Kiss the Sea by Donna Wright
ArtSpace Gallery Wonthaggi until April 25
Open Thursday to Monday, 11am-3pm.
DONNA Wright has been a practising visual artist and art educator for over 30 years, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Kiss the Sea at ArtSpace Gallery Wonthaggi is her first body of work to be exhibited since her move to Venus Bay in 2020. The work and exhibition form part of a recently awarded Creative Victoria Art Grant.
With a PhD in philosophy, her arts practice explores how cultural memory, its residues and movements across generations, and its aesthetic influences inform the way we perceive, shape and engage in the world around us.
Kiss the Sea by Donna Wright
ArtSpace Gallery Wonthaggi until April 25
Open Thursday to Monday, 11am-3pm.
DONNA Wright has been a practising visual artist and art educator for over 30 years, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Kiss the Sea at ArtSpace Gallery Wonthaggi is her first body of work to be exhibited since her move to Venus Bay in 2020. The work and exhibition form part of a recently awarded Creative Victoria Art Grant.
With a PhD in philosophy, her arts practice explores how cultural memory, its residues and movements across generations, and its aesthetic influences inform the way we perceive, shape and engage in the world around us.
Donna Wright explores the way the natural world refuses to be subjugated by humans. Photo: Geoff Ellis When Donna moved to Venus Bay, her immediate response was to the sublime beauty of the natural environment at this southern tip of mainland Australia. Standing on the shorelines, however, Donna knew in her bones that she was a visitor to the lands of the Bunurong and Gunaikurnai people.
She recognised that, in part, the natural world was changed by elements of “aesthetic enhancement” by European settlers’. But she was also struck by the power, magnitude and relentless tenacity of the natural world to reclaim these overlays.
"I am awed by the region's breathtaking natural beauty, a beauty in part altered and transformed by the overlaid colours and shapes of the European settler's aesthetic. Yet, the natural world here, in all ways overpowers and proclaims its dominance and its refusal to be subjugated, even as its vulnerabilities are exposed ...
“ My toes sink into shifting sand, to take momentary refuge with nature's other displaced forms, before high tide loosens their tenuous grip and sends them on their way again.”
Donna’s exceptional exhibition of cross-medium art works is her sensitive visual language response to the push and pull of the fragile shoreline and environment of the Bunurong and Gunaikurnai people. She captures the momentary aesthetic impressions of the stories these lands and waters carry.
During the exhibition, she will be presenting two talks on her integrative experience of this shape-shifting world.
Kiss the Sea is at ArtSpace Gallery Wonthaggi until April 25. Join Donna at the gallery for artist's talks on Saturday March 26 and Saturday April 9 from 1-3pm.
She recognised that, in part, the natural world was changed by elements of “aesthetic enhancement” by European settlers’. But she was also struck by the power, magnitude and relentless tenacity of the natural world to reclaim these overlays.
"I am awed by the region's breathtaking natural beauty, a beauty in part altered and transformed by the overlaid colours and shapes of the European settler's aesthetic. Yet, the natural world here, in all ways overpowers and proclaims its dominance and its refusal to be subjugated, even as its vulnerabilities are exposed ...
“ My toes sink into shifting sand, to take momentary refuge with nature's other displaced forms, before high tide loosens their tenuous grip and sends them on their way again.”
Donna’s exceptional exhibition of cross-medium art works is her sensitive visual language response to the push and pull of the fragile shoreline and environment of the Bunurong and Gunaikurnai people. She captures the momentary aesthetic impressions of the stories these lands and waters carry.
During the exhibition, she will be presenting two talks on her integrative experience of this shape-shifting world.
Kiss the Sea is at ArtSpace Gallery Wonthaggi until April 25. Join Donna at the gallery for artist's talks on Saturday March 26 and Saturday April 9 from 1-3pm.