Please join us Sunday 28th July for a closing finnisage for our current artist in residence Selena de Carvalho

Artist Statement:

I rolled in early Autumn - an aura of pepper berries scent hovering over the shed. This sweet, spicy smell, information plumes about the air, the language of chemical signals buoyant in the morning. A code that to me meant flavor, though scents of this nature often signal defense in the plant world. Moving between invisible realities, smell is a language all animals use to communicate, its ‘meaning’ however is subjective, at times employing mimicry as a cunning mode for enchantment and entanglement. In short, some plants lie, and so do artists. Both are poets. Both can be lost in translation.

We are in a constant state of unconscious translation, interpreting this invisible string while being informed by that interpretation, worlds unfolding over and over and over. This residency arrived during a period where I had a lot of personal noise in my life. So much so that I couldn’t slow down to smell the pepper berries… to close out this unopened gift of time we invite you to come witness and withness a performance installation, a peaceful act of striving, restraint, repetition, and a dash of vulnerable absurdity. A gentle, relentless catharsis.

Selena will repeatedly write the words sometimes /// winning is losing /// sometimes /// losing is winning with carbon ink = 6 proton 6 neutrons 6 electrons (made with the sweaty soot from her mobile sauna) across time for 6 hrs. Hoping to achieve nothing. A poetic gesture.

In so doing she asks what hopeful actions one has performed, motivated by the desire for admiration, accolades and success, and how exhaustive, obsessive and futile are these measures. What gets lost in translation?

About the Artist:
Selena de Carvalho is an experimental artist based in Longley Village, lutruwita (Tasmania). Her interdisciplinary practice unites numerous mediums, including participatory installation, performance, workshops, sculpture, time based media, urban hacking, and writing. Through creative translation and poetic gesture, she discovers and reveals relations within complex, unseen interconnections between living systems and human generated disturbance.

Event Access:

This is a free event. All are welcome to attend for long or short duration throughout the day, and to explore Art Farm during their visit. There will be social nibbles presented at the end (approx 4:00) to celebrate Selena's final mark.

This activity was assisted through Arts Tasmania as part of the Perennial Residency program at Art Farm Birchs Bay.