On Distance + Displacement, Gallery 25, Edith Cowan University, Perth 

“Transformative”

Renée Webster, Director ‘How to Please a Woman’

“Canadian multidisciplinary artist Dawn Dudek transports the viewer between different green environs in her multifaceted exhibition “Distance + Displacement”, on display at Gallery 25 at ECU.

Dudek uses the motifs of a circle within a forest, and a forest within a circle, to travel between Western Australian and Canadian forests in her artworks.

The body of work morphs ever so slightly as you walk around the room. At first you see the original paintings of the forests, soft natural oils on canvas wrapped hardboard with the signature circle cut out of its surface. These paintings then evolve into different mediums the further into the gallery you go.

The paintings can then be seen in photographs of real forests in WA and Canada, and then in circular segments in installations with flora from WA forests. The animation Opposing Narcissus (2023) on the far wall of the gallery reveals the paintings in their final form, a rotating orb projected against the wall covered in Dudek’s paintings, while a photographic forest can be seen rotating at the same speed inside the orb.

As she seamlessly transitions between locations and mediums, Dudek also seamlessly transitions between ideas of difference and commonality, loss and gain, and the sense of ethereality in natural and far away places.”

Jaimi Wright, SeeSaw, Western Australia’s Arts Magazine

seesawmag.com.au

“Dawn’s evocative work plays with perspective as she “documents” the forests she inhabits, in which each image reveals a different view, slipping from the macro to the micro, from the real to the constructed and the direct interventions and placement of paintings within the diverse landscapes she inhabits.”

by Dr Nicola Kaye, ECU Galleries Deputy Director
Associate Professor Lyndall Adams, ECU Galleries Director

Opposing Narcissus: Distance + Displacement, Gallery 25 exhibition projection

Blue Minds Exhibition June 24 – July 6, 2021.In aid of the BLUE MARINE FOUNDATION. 127 Sloane St. London UK