Rachel Feery is a visual artist with a background in videography, based in Naarm / Melbourne. She has worked across interactive and immersive video exhibitions, directed music videos and collaborated with other artists and musicians. Currently Rachel’s experimenting with works on paper and canvas, and ceramics.
The rock formations at Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon appeared like hand built clay monoliths that all had their own textural signatures.
Over April 2017, we were resident artists at Watch this Space ARI in Alice Springs. The following works were made in response to our time spent there and in the surrounding tourist attractions. The title Fool-A-Roo is in reference to Mount Connor, aka. ‘Fool-Uru’, a third lone-standing rock formation close to Uluru and Kata Tjuta that ill informed tourists driving from Alice Springs often mistook for Uluru.
Most of these works are ephemeral or applied to surfaces that aren’t made for adhering too. Temporary materials such as chalk and soft pastel were applied on surfaces such as glass, mirrors, paper and the floor and then were ‘degraded’ and diluted with water. It was a deliberate choice not to include photography and instead simulate the tactility and temporal experience of the landscapes, how the rock formations at Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon appeared like hand built clay monoliths that all had their own textural signatures. When bush walking at Ormiston Gorge, we became aware of the multitude of colours on the rock floor. The surprisingly copper and metallic reflections at Ellery Big Hole, and the iridescent sheen of the ghost gums of the MacDonnell Ranges.
Participants agreed to look directly into a flood LED light and asked to walk towards it.
Produced as part of Aphids and Fed Square’s Creative Program Screen Residency, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, 2014.
After-image was an artwork made during a four day residency. Members of the public were invited to participate and be filmed. Participants agreed to look directly into a flood LED light and asked to walk towards it. This video was then screened at Fed Square’s Big Screen and the subjects of the film in turn became an after-image of sorts when the flood light was exposed to the crowd.
A silent short projected onto a screen composed of cotton sheets at The Abbotsford Convent, Magdalen Asylum Laundry.
Projected onto the walls of the historical Magdalen Asylum laundry, this film presents three young women breaking free of the grounds, revealing in dirt and exploring the open air of the Australian bush. The experience is a stark contrast to the clammy environment of the laundries in which the women worked. Long days spent scrubbing soiled hotel sheets for board was regarded as a way of repenting their ‘sins’ and cleansing the soul by returning the sheets to white, the symbol of purity.
Their fleeting act of freedom and youthful rebellion is soon forgotten when they retreat to their old ways. Together they take to the cold lake to scrub the mud out of their whites in a last act of conditioned repentance.
A multi-sensory work inviting pairs to cloak-up, complete a circuit, and experience simultaneous mapped projections visible through a hooded veil.
This experiential artwork relies heavily on a multi-sensory experience of vision, touch and sound. The overall visual component stems from a desire to defragment one’s hard-drive and regain clarity, independent thought, free from the prison of past browsing history and metadata maps. Under the premise that the more a person is ‘cleared’ the stronger authentic personal connections will become, the shared experience can only be undertaken in pairs, encouraging participation of a community.
It examines how new ways of experiencing information make incursions in our field of vision and psyche.
A giant mobile of minimalist sculptures suspended and illuminated under ultraviolet light offers a place to pause in the far corner of the festival club lounge.
Loops is an installation that was created specifically for 2015 Paradise Festival. Situated in the festival Clublounge, a collection of abstract, minimalist sculptures were suspended and illuminated under ultraviolet light in a far corner of the room.
The title Loops, is symbolic of how music can enrapture us but also how it can feel like a shift in space and time. As fluorescent objects, they fit within a familiar club culture but are at the same time mystifying, oblique objects calling to come closer. Making for a transitory space that visitors can lay and be transfixed by the subtle moving forms.
Portal is a work that reflects on the Information Age and the omnipresent screen.
Portal is a work that reflects on the Information Age and the omnipresent screen. The luscious and hypnotic imagery invokes a mix of Astral Projection meditation videos and the special effects enhanced visual vocabulary of science-fiction/fantasy films. The siren call of the soundscape draws visitors into the space which reveals a large floating orb of colour and light. Nebulas and intricate osculate within configuring passages to other worlds.
First shown as a solo exhibition at BUS Projects, Melbourne, 2011, with a catalogue essay by Jessie Scott; restaged as an exhibiting finalist in The Substation Contemporary Art Prize, 2016.
Imagery of sunsets, waterfalls, clouds and grandiose oceans provide rapturous imagery that the subject is lost in.
Dream of Pictures is an audio-visual video installation work that draws from pseudo-spiritual imagery associated with alternative realms and outer bodily experiences. Presented as a dual projection, the participant drifts between worlds. Imagery of sunsets, waterfalls, clouds and grandiose oceans provide rapturous imagery that the subject is lost in. A minimal soundscape produced by Edward Gould is a mix of relaxation tapes and atmospheric samples heightening the kitsch-ness of fantasy.