AustLit
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Artist: NELL
Birth date, place: Born 1975 Maitland, New South Wales. Lives and works Sydney, New South Wales.
This artist's profile was developed by Morgan Bundy-Wright during 2014 at The University of Queensland as a part of the Visual Arts Curating and Writing course, convened by Dr Allison Holland.
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Nell has trained extensively as an artist, both in Australia and overseas. She has a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Sydney College of Arts (1993- 1995), Honors from the University of California (1996) and a Masters of Visual Arts through Sydney College of the Arts and École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (1999- 2000). She has also had various residences overseas; in Rome, Beijing and Paris.
During Nell's art school education she worked as an assistant for established artist Lindy Lee who became both a professional and personal mentor to her. Nell comments that, “It was undoubtedly the most formative relationship of my adult life”. It was also Lindy Lee who introduced Nell to Buddhism which features heavily in her work.
As an emerging artist, Nell was one of six founding directors of Rubyayre, an artist run space in Marrickvile, Sydney which exhibits both fine art (painting, sculpture and photography etc.) and design (fashion and architecture etc.) works.
Nell's talent was recognized early in her career when, in 1999 at just 24, she was chosen to exhibit in the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Primavera with 'The Perfect Drip'. The motif of the drip is a recurring image in Nell's work. Other imagery common in Nell's work include ‘the egg’, ‘the fly’, ‘the ghost’, ‘crosses’, 'Buddhas' and ‘smiley faces’.
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Nell's work cannot be pigeonholed into a particular genre, style or technique. She works across mediums and employs painting, sculpture, instillation, video, performance and music. Her lack of attachment to a particular medium or style has even been described as promiscuous.
She also works outside of the “fine art” realm and “gallery world”. In 2012, Nell collaborated with fashion label ‘Romance was Born' in the creation of their spring/ summer collection, 'The Oracle'. She is also currently working on a children’s book.
Though difficult to categorize in terms of signature style, Nell's work explores birth/life, sex and death; Buddhism and Christianity and, rock and roll. Though often dealing with themes traditionally described as somber, Nell's art practice (emerging from her Buddhist practices) balances the morose with the mirthful. She has playfully used the motif of childlike smiley faces on otherwise pessimistic images, such as a gravestone (Happy Ending 2006) or a “shit” (Everyday Happiness, 2010) to divorce the objects from their negative connotations.
For her, the use of such binaries (life and death especially) are not really juxtapositions but rather, something more complex. Life and death do not sit in opposition to each other. Though her work proclaims and rejoices their remarkable differences, she also affirms their innate connection; they are inseparable.
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"I'm different every day. I think people end up with signature styles, kind of an accent in a way, but my accent is just who I am" - Nell.
“When I was 16 I knew I was going to be an artist and that my art practice was my life practice. I experience art making as the totality of possibility for anything and everything to come into existence or to disappear. And freedom is always near” -Nell.
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