WE ARE TEPORARILY CLOSED DUE TO COVID-19 LOCKDOWN

FRONT ROOM DISPLAY:

A PART OF EXHIBITION NIGHTSHADE BY ARTIST WENDY CATLING IS DISPLAYING IN GALLERY 1 AND CAN BE VIEWED FROM THE STREET

THIS EXHIBITION IS COMPOSED THROUGH THE ENTIRE GALLERY, STARTS FROM G1 AND ENDS AT G3. IT FACILITATES DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY, COLLECTED LETTERS, AND VIDEO WORKS. THE EXHIBITION WILL RESUME ONCE THE LOCKDOWN RESTRICTION IS LIFTED.

Wendy Catling is an emerging artist and MA student at Photography Studies College, Melbourne. This exhibition is the culmination of 18 months research into the personal history archives of her parents and makes links with domestic violence as a national trauma. Catling is a volunteer at McAuley Community Services for Women working with women and children escaping domestic violence. Her experiences as a child growing up with the stalking and domestic abuse of her mother by her father has led to a passionate interest in engaging audiences with the subtleties of coercive control, the causes of domestic abuse and the long-term effects on families.

Catling’s Master of Arts – Photography project titled Nightshade conflates weeds and domestic abuse, drawing parallels between the aggressive, dominating behaviours of domestic abusers and the invasive and destructive nature of weeds.

The project centres around the artist’s mother’s life and her love of gardening with the nightshade as a metaphor for the duality of her father’s attractiveness and charm in public, and his violence and coercive control in private. During their twenty-year tumultuous relationship she, or they, moved-house numerous times – the first was to escape his stalking. In every garden she battled weeds.

Nightshade is a diaristic project that facilitates digital photography, collected letters, video and web content and presents them in an installation that explores the effects of trauma caused by domestic abuse. The project is driven by excavated small details and quietly significant moments of personal history hidden in family albums and documents. Indelible blue shadows of the past emerge; concealing and revealing the ambiguities in human relationships and the photographic record.

Website: https://nightshadeproject.cargo.site/

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE https://www.alternatingcurrentartspace.com/home/wendy-catling-catalogue/