CONSTANT ECOLOGY
Constant Ecology is a series of in-home residencies commissioned by BLINDSIDE, CAVES, KINGS Artist-Run and West Space during lockdown.
Residency Duration: June - August 2020
Exhibition: late 2020 TBC
constantecology.com
This project is supported by the City of Melbourne through the Strategic Partnership Program.
Kate Wallace
In 2020 the various cultural, economic, environmental and global ecologies we find ourselves undergoing major upheavals and transformations. From the unprecedented bushfires to the global pandemic, these changes to our contingent and fragile ecology require urgent reflection and critical scrutiny. In response, four independent art organisations—BLINDSIDE, CAVES, KINGS Artist-Run and West Space—have developed Constant Ecology, a collaborative initiative that seeks to address this current moment by supporting a series of in-home residencies by artists and creatives based in Victoria.
Constant Ecology commissioned eight artists to undertake a two-month, at-home residency during this period of isolation, to allow artists to think-through, unpack and creatively respond to the current ecological crisis in all of its manifestations.
The artists participating in Constant Ecology include: Maya Hodge, Joseph L. Griffiths, Amalia Lindo, Amy Jane Parker, Kate Ellis, Sam Peterson, Kate Wallace, and Noriko Nakamura.
BLINDSIDE liaison Jake Treacy will be supporting Kate Wallace in this residency.
Looking out and looking in with nowhere else to go. Like many, the weight of being separated from loved ones and friends has been significant. So too have the restrictions governing our very movements. However difficult, this time in isolation has exemplified systemic issues of access and inequality. It has been reassuring to find solace through a screen. To seek comfort when barriers to transit remain. And yet the prevalence of loneliness persists.
Reflecting upon the experience of isolation in an age of ecological unrest, the project will explore ideas of escapism, nostalgia and a longing for worlds distant and unknown. Through a series of paintings and writings made during the residency, there will be online and physical outcomes to this project. In tandem with a physical and online exhibition of works, the written components of this project will be made available via regular blog updates.
Melbourne based artist Kate Wallace looks to record and translate experiences of places past and present through the dialogue of representational painting. Informed by photographs taken in wait or transit, Wallace considers our shared view of the world as an intimate counterpoint to the fast and constant experience of today.
Kate holds a Master of Contemporary Art from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Wallace has exhibited across Melbourne in galleries including Lon Gallery, Yarra Sculpture Gallery, C3 Contemporary Art Space, Kings Artist Run, Hyper Contemporary and Linden Projects Space. She was awarded the Wingate Student Fellowship Art Prize in 2018, and is a recent recipient of a Career Development Grant from the Australia Council for the Arts.
IMAGE| Kate Wallace, View of driveway #3’ 2019 Oil on board 18 x 13cm | Corner 2018 Oil on board 12.7 x 10.3cm |View from an aeroplane window 2019 Oil on board 12.7 x 10.3cm | View of trees and birds #1 2019 Oil on linen 25 x 20cm |View to a room #2 2019 Oil on board 12.7 x 10.3cm | Photography Aaron Christopher Rees. Courtesy the artist.