CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Chelsea Gustafsson

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Abundance: The Pleasure of Plenty

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The practice of artist Chelsea Gustafsson reveals both a painter of technical skill and a person in possession of a sharp sense of humour. Exploring concerns both social and personal; be it ocean pollution, consumerist clutter or the virtue of Australia’s native plant-life, Gustafsson utilises a visual language mixed with imagination and incongruity to speak affably of those issues facing contemporary society. Her paintings explore the boundaries and crossover of the natural and man-made worlds. Both beautiful and ugly, pleasing and awkward, there is, however, a mood of something being not quite right as innocuous man-made objects plague and impinge on their organic companions.

“I like to play with objects and textures that don’t necessarily sit well together naturally. Through the process of constructing items into a sculptural form and twisting or balancing them to find their sweet spot for a composition and watching how the light falls and reflects across them, they begin to gel as a single form and a beauty emerges. It’s this tension of what’s seemingly pleasing yet has an underlying awkwardness that I find a kind of peacefulness in. Time in my studio creating is my coping mechanism for contemplating the complications our world is faced with. The works are a response to an expectation of finding an awkwardly acceptable point of existence in a world that we’re told is changing whilst being presented with both frightening facts and stories of hope and solutions.”
Chelsea Gustafsson, Artist Statement

“The beige textures of the cardboard boxes, all battered, sellotaped, and crumpled at the edges, dominate the picture plane. Their form is humble and ubiquitous, yet also suggestive of consumption, waste, and containment. When seen as repositories of memory and knowledge, they begin to symbolise what has been lost through decades of relentless consumerism. They become an archive of extinction events, ready to be stored away.” Phe Luxford, excerpt from ‘Souvenirs’ catalogue essay, 2024.

"For 'Fish Out of Water', the artist has focused her attention on the ocean’s most indomitable apex predator - the shark - to once again lay bare the complicated relationship between us humans and our broader environment. Rather than preach to the viewer about our collective destruction of our planet and the decimation of animal populations, however, Gustafsson prefers to explore our fear, fetishism and reverence for these majestic animals with the hope that the viewer will draw their own conclusions."
Excerpt from catalogue essay by Kate McAuley 2022

The Blue Review lists Chelsea Gustafsson as one of the 20 Most Important Female Artists of 2020

Read: Blue Review's interview with Chelsea in the lead up to her 2019 solo exhibition Comfort Kills.

ARTIST PROFILE:
Having previously worked in film and television and as a graphic designer Gustafsson’s shift toward working as a professional artist has seen her exhibit both nationally and internationally, and be announced as a finalist in the Basil Sellers Art Prize (2024), the Lethbridge 20,000 Small Scale Art Award (2023), the Kennedy Prize (2023, 2021, 2018), STILL: National Still Life Award (2023), the Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize (2018), Percival Tucker Portrait Prize (2018), the Black Swan Prize (2018), the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (2018), the Metro 5 Art Award (2007), the John Leslie Art Award (2008), the ANL Maritime Art Prize (2009) and winner of Linden Postcard Show in 2010.