Virginia Settre
Painting allows me to express my notion of having a ‘real’ experience of nature. This stems from a childhood in South Australia that was spent running free in the great outdoors. This recreational passion is entangled with my family ancestry and I often contrast and compare [winter in an] Australian landscape, and the homelands of my Northern European fore bares. I enjoy exploring and exposing winter landscapes as this aesthetic is often sidelined in Australian Visual Culture. I have developed a language around these themes whilst studying painting and photography for an Honours Degree in Fine Art and Visual Culture.
My interest in the creative arts has led me to a diverse career that has involved film and theatre as well as my art studio practice, curatorial contracts and Art Gallery Management. I practice and exhibit my art in Bulli, which is on the South Coast of New South Wales, a picturesque place which is host to a vibrant community of like minded Creative’s. Bulli is an hour and a half drive to Sydney where my work has been exhibited as well as in Canberra.
This is the second time my paintings have travelled to Hong Kong, as my artwork was exhibited at the Asian Contemporary Art Fair in 2016.
The natural world [ecological nature] is a key theme to my artwork, in relation to a 21st century perception of nature. The concepts that I grapple with involve historical and current cultural perspectives, and how society views the natural world in the 21st Century. This may vary according one’s own culture or socio-political viewpoint; and so, I make the suggestion that we are looking through a ‘lens’ that is specific to our own interpretation.
To render the notion of looking through a lens I create paintings that hint at photography and create the sensation of looking through a window, windscreen or a camera.
There is an element of Romanticism in my artwork; an uncanniness that hinges upon an ambiguous sense of memory or nostalgia. The landscapes that I create are not of any particular place, rather I evoke scenes that reside in the memory of the viewer. The work communicates with subconscious and compels a yearning for a place, that can only be found in the natural world.
My interest in the creative arts has led me to a diverse career that has involved film and theatre as well as my art studio practice, curatorial contracts and Art Gallery Management. I practice and exhibit my art in Bulli, which is on the South Coast of New South Wales, a picturesque place which is host to a vibrant community of like minded Creative’s. Bulli is an hour and a half drive to Sydney where my work has been exhibited as well as in Canberra.
This is the second time my paintings have travelled to Hong Kong, as my artwork was exhibited at the Asian Contemporary Art Fair in 2016.
The natural world [ecological nature] is a key theme to my artwork, in relation to a 21st century perception of nature. The concepts that I grapple with involve historical and current cultural perspectives, and how society views the natural world in the 21st Century. This may vary according one’s own culture or socio-political viewpoint; and so, I make the suggestion that we are looking through a ‘lens’ that is specific to our own interpretation.
To render the notion of looking through a lens I create paintings that hint at photography and create the sensation of looking through a window, windscreen or a camera.
There is an element of Romanticism in my artwork; an uncanniness that hinges upon an ambiguous sense of memory or nostalgia. The landscapes that I create are not of any particular place, rather I evoke scenes that reside in the memory of the viewer. The work communicates with subconscious and compels a yearning for a place, that can only be found in the natural world.
