Andrea Selwood
+/- = e
This fax art installation was commissioned for an exhibition exchange in 1998 to mark the sister-city relationship between Dunedin and Edinburgh celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Otago. Here, the electronic messenger delivers an anonymous, seemingly endless image which translates as the mechanical embodiment of the artist/sender. Ideas surrounding culture and technology operate alongside distance and communication within the realm of time-based media.
A 20 metre continuous image will emit from an obsolete fax machine over one week. This time-in-motion piece reveals more on return visits to the gallery. Imagery and text is borrowed from various sources and digitally composed within a grey scale background, symbolising darkness moving towards the light. Included are penned letters and local government insignia released from the Otago Settlers Museum archive. Together, these fragments represent one type of European cultural perspective, my own Scottish origins.
Interestingly, the existing mechanical degradation of the image caused by the fax machine, now includes the deterioration effect of age on the thermal fax paper due to 13 years of storage. This only adds to the notion of colonial culture as a recycled facsimile copy taken from an original, its constant re-telling like a game of Chinese Whispers. - Andrea Selwood, 2012
+/- = e
This fax art installation was commissioned for an exhibition exchange in 1998 to mark the sister-city relationship between Dunedin and Edinburgh celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Otago. Here, the electronic messenger delivers an anonymous, seemingly endless image which translates as the mechanical embodiment of the artist/sender. Ideas surrounding culture and technology operate alongside distance and communication within the realm of time-based media.
A 20 metre continuous image will emit from an obsolete fax machine over one week. This time-in-motion piece reveals more on return visits to the gallery. Imagery and text is borrowed from various sources and digitally composed within a grey scale background, symbolising darkness moving towards the light. Included are penned letters and local government insignia released from the Otago Settlers Museum archive. Together, these fragments represent one type of European cultural perspective, my own Scottish origins.
Interestingly, the existing mechanical degradation of the image caused by the fax machine, now includes the deterioration effect of age on the thermal fax paper due to 13 years of storage. This only adds to the notion of colonial culture as a recycled facsimile copy taken from an original, its constant re-telling like a game of Chinese Whispers. - Andrea Selwood, 2012
Andrea Selwood - Artst Information
Education
Education
- 1991 - Graduated with a Diploma of Fine Arts, Honours (Painting), School of Art, Otago Polytechnic
- 1993 - Awarded the Con Hutton Scholarship
- 1993-95 - Master of Fine Arts Degree, School of drawing and Painting, Edinburgh College of Art
- 2001 - Diploma Secondary Teaching, Dunedin Teachers College
- 1995-2000 - Returned from OE to reside in Dunedin
- 1999 - Birth of first daughter
- 2002 - Moved to Wellington, South Coast, Full-time secondary teaching
- 2007 - Birth of second daughter
- 1993 - Practising visual artist
- 1994 - Received a professional development grant, Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council to document slide lecture contemporary and emerging artists in Scotland toured NZ art schools
- 1996 - Secondary school art teaching, part-time
- 2002 - Full-time teaching Visual Arts; Senior Design, Painting and Photography
- 1997 - Solo Show, 'Drive-by' shopfront installation, Dunedin
- 1998 - Group show, '+,- = e' part installation featured 'Southern Lights' exhibition exchange Dunedin Public Art Gallery/ Edinburgh City Centre, 15Oth Anniversary of European Settlement in Otago
- - Solo Tour, '+,- = e' touring public galleries, lower South Island; Southland, Eastern Southland, Forrester (Oamaru), Asburton
- - Exhibitions documented in publications; 'Southern Lights - 150 years of landscape art' Otago Early Settlers/ Dunedin Public Art Gallery Art periodicals (Art New Zealand, Spring Vol.,1999 - essay by Susan Ballard)
- 1997-2000 - Solo show, 'Athenaeum Project' reactivating/ locating a site-based installation Dunedin Public Art Gallery
- 2009 - Part-time visual arts practice and continuing exhibitions record