Over her career, artist Amy Wright has pursued a diverse range of creative work. Following a foray in Sculpture at VCA, Amy trained as a Print Textile Designer and later entered the world of ‘very corporate design studios’, working in the automotive industry. After a time, she launched her own working studio/store in Prahran, where she produced limited runs of printed textile homewares.
With the closure of her store, the versatile creative became a self-taught florist launching, her ‘Wunderplant’ wedding and events business. ‘As this work was seasonal, it allowed for time to be spent returning to design and painting, and with an ever-constant source of inspiration from the floral studio, more and more of my time transitioned to focus on creating art,’ Amy tells.
While painting had persistently been an integral part of her life, opportunities organically arose, allowing Amy to transition to a full-time art practice. The latest product of her labour is ‘Narrative’, an exhibition that pieces together ‘snapshot moments’ of storied landscapes. ‘I drive my partner mad when we go for walks, as I spend a lot of time taking photos – often of what appears to be the most obscure things,’ she tells. ‘I’m fascinated by textures and details that no one else would probably even notice; I see landscapes in segments.’
Created over the past six months, the show draws on the artist’s move from Melbourne to the township of Ceres in regional Victoria. ‘As a way of finding my place in my new environment, I spent many hours exploring the local area, namely the Surf Coast,’ explains Amy. ‘This abstract style has been a natural progression, slowly evolving over the years in response to the way I interpret my environment.’
Delving further, ‘Narrative‘ examines the digital and analogue tools we use to catalogue our experience within an environment. ‘Our worlds are dictated by social media and I’m interested in the way in which we create personas that we put out to the world; we document everything in a refined and curated way,’ explains Amy, highlighting the restricted insights offered by Instagram. ‘Personally, I’m still very analogue and an active collector of objects – seed pods, seaweed, pieces of colourful discarded plastic, twine,’ she details. As a result, Amy’s process combines curated ‘snapshots’ from our digital worlds, with the physical objects we hold on to in real life: ‘I’m collaging them together to interpret what is beyond that square, or what was left behind.’
‘Narrative’ by Amy Wright
August 5th to 26th
The Coach House Gallery
327 Shannon Avenue, Newtown, Geelong.
