Kelsey Ashe | The Deep Green Sea
From Saturday 23 November 2024
To Sunday 23 February 2025
The Deep Green Sea is a major solo exhibition by Kelsey Ashe, presenting an immersive installation of expansive screen prints and short film. Ashe has created a surreal world of dark fairytales upon coastal seascapes, which are recognisably Antipodean, yet inflected with strange ecological allegories of the artist's imagination.
Meticulously screen-printed in botanical inks and photoluminescent pigments at a giant scale, the oceanic-gothic artworks fittingly fill the large inner sanctum of the former Catholic Chapel at BRAG.
Ashe envisions the sublime and mysterious within landscapes by drawing on her studies in Japanese aesthetic philosophy and print-making techniques. The artist seeks instances of yugen; a Japanese word referring to the ‘dark, tranquil colour of the universe and the profound awareness of this which triggers a deep emotional response’.
Kelsey Ashe
Kelsey Ashe is an established contemporary WA artist, based in Fremantle whose aesthetic draws from Antipodean landscapes, constructed mythologies and surrealist narrative.
Ashe has exhibited regularly locally, nationally and internationally including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and Spilt Milk Gallery in Edinburgh UK, Site: Brooklyn Gallery, Katonah Museum of Modern Art and the Barrett Art Centre all in New York USA, Singapore Art Week and the WA Maritime Museum and the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia.
In 2020 Ashe came second in an International Feminist Surrealist Exhibition, ’31 Women’ which was a re-make of Peggy Guggenheims famous all-female surrealist exhibition of 1943, catapulting her work onto a worldwide stage.
Ashe has a PhD in Art based in Japanese Aesthetic Philosophy which directs a depth of contemplation into her artworks. Story-telling is central to Ashe’s practice, explored primarily through mediums of hand-etched screen-prints, short-film and written word.
Discover more about Ashe here
Image: Kelsey Ashe, Cardinal Sea Cathedral (Sugarloaf Rock). 2024. Screen Print, botanical inks on canvas. 140x200cm. Image courtesy the artist.
This project is supported by the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries
