projects

W-O-M-A-N, 2020. Assemblage, found objects. 125mm w x 230mm h x 20mm d.

Assembly, Artist in Residence, Solo Exhibition 2020

During the 2020 pandemic, many of us experienced unexpected shifts, artist Meaghan Shelton departed the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, Queensland, returning to the Golden Plains of her home state of Victoria, a state affected by the longest and most lockdowns globally.

For artists initially, this time bought a sense of school being out; isn’t it every artist’s dream to stay at home or the studio and work? The novelty wore off for many with the realisation that hard won projects were being cancelled or postponed indefinitely, causing great bedevilment to flow, volition and momentum of creative practice. Necessity became the mother of invention and a refocussing of ideas became the order of the day… perhaps even a reworking of ourselves.

Shelton’s appointment as Kia Sulc Artist in Residence 2020, was to include use of the Cooroy Butter Factory’s beautifully allocated atrium studio space, however, her work began on the road South and her parents kitchen table. Made with found objects serendipitously stumbled upon in a rural opportunity shop, some kindly donated by friends, Shelton’s body of work Assembly, speaks of reckonings. She has returned to the basics of text, form, and colour, back to square one with small works on canvas and miniature sculptures using children’s discarded toy building blocks.

Taking inspiration from the Russian Constructivists, Assembly is homage to the agitprop movement, their fearless determination and activism, hiding encoded messages of resistance in their work, a legacy for the irrepressible voice of the artist. To speak truth to power resonates not only in macrocosmic ecologies, but also within the microcosmic. As Shelton builds a city in miniature, the playful aesthetics of Assembly, created during Covid 19 lockdowns, belies the darker implications of a contemporary commentary.