Rebecca Selleck has been selected as a finalist in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize with her work bracken fern two.
‘I use my practice to express the complexities of being human: Materiality becomes an exploration of value systems, fragility, and permanence. This intricate cast work is my most technically complex, using the form of Pteridium esculentum, or austral bracken, whose genus extends across the world and history stretches back over 55 million years.
The work is part of a series that explores our experiences of bliss in the presence of nature. Losing myself in living objects around me, I find networked biological histories through time in that space that I try to understand, but that are ultimately beyond my comprehension. When I look closely, it feels like that beautiful complexity becomes part of me.
I want to share that moment. To express such enormous value, I’ve taken the ordinary and fleeting and made it golden. Now they speak human, but what’s been lost in translation? The moment has passed and the object a facsimile formed from surface indentations, becoming just a permanent reminder of the ephemeral.
The work is a portal into the exquisite complexities that exist all around us and a reminder that we can’t escape being human. We are just our perceptions. But sometimes that can be beautiful anyway.’
Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf until 20 November; free entry.
Artwork:
Rebecca Selleck
Bracken fern two, 2022
bronze, velvet, stainless steel, sealant
dimensions variable
