Here and Now: Gold Coast Triennial 2024 Digital Gallery
Chelsea Jewell
b.1977 Adelaide SA, lives Gold Coast QLD
Folding Fathoms , 2024
bamboo, acrylic, adhesive
Image courtesy of the artist
Artist Statement
Folding Fathoms is an exploration of self as the intimate local and the specificity of body centric measurement in that locality.
In this work, Chelsea maps her own fathom (outstretched arms), dividing the form where the heart is most felt, then folding the structural fields into each other as an expression of embrace. Using her body as the point of reference in the work, Chelsea articulates the resonance and specificity of patterns that connect language, body and documentation. The structure wavers with chromatic shifts, references colours that elicit oxytocin in the same manner of an embrace.
Chelsea centres her practice in information and research, searching for unexpected relationships and connection, with the ambition of the assemblages being sites of wonder and delight that are activated by movement and light.
About the Artist
Chelsea Jewell lives and works on Kombumerri country. A recent graduate of the Byron School of Art (BSA), Chelsea leverages her background as an architect to expand on spatial and structural literacy.
Chelsea uses a vocabulary of line, light, shadow, and ready-to-hand materials from the domestic environment to allow volumetric maps to emerge. Fabricating these delicate drawings is a quiet, repetitive meditation where the gesture is welcomed through accumulated errors.
These constructions bring form to what is unseen, documenting relationships between body, time and place, as relational works that have embedded narratives.
Chelsea has shown work over the past three years in South East Queensland and in Northern New South Wales. Since graduating from BSA, she has undertaken an Artist in Residence for Sitelines 2024, facilitated ArtShapers at Tweed Regional Gallery for Sprung Dance Theatre and produced a large-scale work for Swell Sculpture Festival 2024.
