Wren Moore
BFA (Hons)
Artist | Designer | Researcher
Place-based research and making in isolated Australian landscapes
Artist | Designer | Researcher
Spending almost half her life on an island called Tasmania, at times against her will, Wren's research explores how isolated places and landscapes affect identity, the body and artistic practice through image-making and contemporary jewellery praxis.
Wren's current doctoral research investigates how wayfaring through isolated shorelines within the 20th and 40th latitudes of Australia affect identity, the body and artistic practice. Highlighting novel ways of place-based research and making in isolated Australian landscapes, Wren's research aims to communicate through an auto-ethnographical methodology, the intertwined relationship humans share with place.
— Tim Ingold —
"To be, I would now say, is not to be in place but to be along paths. The path, and not the place, is the primary condition of being, or rather of becoming".
'The Illuminated Line' 2019 Honours Research UTAS
'Where the Light Wrecks'
'Where the Light Wrecks'
'Where the Light Wrecks'
2019, brass, Tasmanian sand, silk thread, 44 x 0.1 x 7.5cm
Inspiration for these artworks comes not only from visual landscapes and the identity of place, but also includes a layering of the bodily act of making and the ontology of emotions that comes from living and making in isolated places.
'New Topologies'
'Where the Light Wrecks'
'Where the Light Wrecks'
2019, consolidated alloys, brass, silk thread, 44 x .01 x 10cm
Place shapes who we are and can change our identities and our bodies based upon our metaphysical and physical experience of place. There is also an undeniable intertwined relationship and narrative between human interaction with landscape and place that I wish to express through wearable artefacts.
'Untitled'
'Where the Light Wrecks'
'Untitled'
2019, brass, Tasmanian sand, silk thread, 44 x 0.1 x 8cm
Either as a form of protection, an amulet or talisman, or a form of projection of identity; wearable objects speak to the nature of materials found within and upon the landscape. Wearable objects also communicate ways in which culturally we adorn our bodies as an expression of ourselves and lived experiences.
'Where the Light Wrecks'
A contemporary body adornment object worn around the neck, imbued with a narrative of the artists' experiences of living on the island of Tasmania. The object holds within its form the endurance of living on an island surrounded by large, impassable bodies of water that act as a barrier or boundary. New identity and bodily landscapes emerge from moments of intense physical, mental and emotional trauma.
Through scar lines, both seen and unseen, a fragile yet strong presence emerges. 'Where the Light Wrecks' becomes an artefact of 'islandness', isolation and the struggle for freedom from societal pressures for women who remain unwittingly 'trapped on the island'.
'Where the Light Wrecks' was a finalist in the Women's Art Prize Tasmania, 2020.
Photo: Tim Coad