Nicole Welch’s moving image works employ cinematic devices to record her performances and installations undertaken in the Australian landscape. Like her photographic works, the emphasis is on in-camera capture with minimal post-production. They are at once immersive and intimate.
Night
Screening at Artereal Gallery, Sydney, 2024
October 18 – 16 November
Night, 2024 (preview)
HD infrared, monochrome, sound, aspect ratio 16:9
14:00min
Edition of 6, 2AP
Explore Unveiling the Night here
Wiradyuri Ngayirr Ngurambang – Sacred Country
Nicole Welch, Wiradyuri Elder Wirribee Leanna Carr-Smith, & Kate Elizabeth Smith. Drone capture by Henry Simmons.
An immersive moving image work exploring Wiradyuri Ngurambang Ngayirr. Wiradyuri Elder Wirribee shares part of the narrative of Custodianship of Country, collaboratively working with local artist Nicole Welch, whose work is linked to caretaking the environment.
This work explores shared understandings between First Nation and Non-First Nation women, connecting to the landscape from Tarana along the Wambuul/Macquarie River to Wahluu/Mt. Panorama, offering a space for contemplation toward the healing of people,
community, place, and shared stories.
Wiradyuri Ngayirr Ngurambang – Sacred Country (still)
HD video, sound, 2022
NFS
Provenance:
Bathurst Winter Festival, Tremains Mill, Bathurst, NSW
Yarrahapinni
Yarrahapinni (preview), 2019
single channel HD infrared time lapse – 3:21mins
50 inch screen, gilded frame
edition of 3
Provenance:
From the Studio, the Artists of Hill End, Hill End Art Gallery, NSW, 2023
Sydney Contemporary Presents, online Art Fair, 2020
Kangaroo Valley Art Prize, Kangaroo Valley Hall Gallery, Kangaroo Valley, NSW, 2020
Listening in the Anthropocene, H R Gallery (online event), Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, 2020
The Manly Dam Project, Manly Gallery & Museum, Syd, NSW, 2019/20
The Yarrahapinni time-lapse film records tidal flow into an estuary, symbolically referencing the rejuvenation and reawakening of a wetland environment. Recorded on location in the Yarrahapinni Wetlands National Park it is an affirmative work that celebrates our capacity to rebuild fragile ecosystems. The Yarrahapinni Wetland Restoration Project undertaken by the Water Research Laboratory team in collaboration with the NSW National Parks, has successfully rebalanced the hydrological and water quality conditions to naturally encourage the regeneration of what was a highly acidic wetland. It is now a thriving estuarine wetland with greatly improved bird and fish habitat and with regenerating mangrove and saltmarsh endangered ecological communities.
The scientists use of remote and on ground monitoring and sensing techniques, including satellite and infrared mapping was of particular interest to me, as they are technologies that I have used in my arts practice to record landscape, and to extend and collapse time. For wetland restoration projects this visual data is collected to analyse changes in wetland distribution, vegetation, tidal inundation and health of the estuary over time. Constructed from 4800 high resolution photographs captured over several hours the Yarrahapinni infrared time-lapse film mirrors the use of these scientific methodologies to speak to the potential of environmental restoration and rejuvenation. Framed within an antique gilded frame, Yarrahapinni references the history of landscape painting, drawing parallels across time.
The area is in the country of the Dunghutti and Gumbayaggir nations (a sharing place). I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging and give thanks for the opportunity to make work at this significant location.
Transformation
Transformation – journey (preview)
HD video
11:29min
edition of 6
Provenance:
Altered States, Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, NSW, 30 November 2019 – 8 February 2020.
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, Sydney, September 2019.
Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 28 August – 15 September 2019
Naked & Nude Art Prize 2019, Manning Regional Art Gallery, NSW, 7 September – 13 October 2019
Artstate Bathurst – 2018, Tremain’s Mill, Bathurst, 31 October – 5 November 2018
Transformation – Arrival (preview)
HD Video
4:51min
edition of 6
Provenance:
Altered States, Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, NSW, 30 November 2019 – 8 February 2020.
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, Sydney, September 2019.
Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 28 August – 15 September 2019
Naked & Nude Art Prize 2019, Manning Regional Art Gallery, NSW, 7 September – 13 October 2019
Artstate Bathurst – 2018, Tremain’s Mill, Bathurst, 31 October – 5 November 2018
Transformation – Journey & Arrival a moving Memento Mori is the latest instalment in Nicole Welch’s ongoing Self series, which was initiated as part of her Illumination works in 2012. In these cinematic works Welch uses her body as an apparatus and the landscape as a tableau. Undertaking performances in the wilderness Welch explores the symbiotic relationship humans have with the natural world to reveal the fragility and strength of both. As a continuation the Transformation footage sees the artist engage directly with the natural world through a journey undertaken (journey) , and a waterfall (arrival); a universal symbol of renewal, healing and ultimately, transformation.
Filmed over several hours on location during the heart of winter in the lower Blue Mountains, Transformation exposes the artists body to the elements. While the figure is Welch, the symbolism is universal. She embodies a lineage of women through time as a homage to all women – past, present, future. The journey sequence is a celebration of our unique connection to nature, our shared strength and resilience, the cycle of life, mortality – the arrival scene is an act of transformation, both mythical and personal, local and universal.
Transformation: the prelude
Transformation: the prelude (preview)
infrared timelapse – 9:41mins
HD video, sound, 2018
Constructed from 1000 photographs of a waterfall captured using infrared technology, the resulting hyperreal light spectrum and colours revealed are invisible to the human eye, symbolically referencing the notion of the unobserved. Water is the central theme in this moving image work, the waterfall is held in a perpetual loop, flowing and then reversing, moving several times faster than it naturally would. Nature has been manipulated and interrupted – the frenetic pace of the water gives the sense that something is about to happen, the stage is set; the scene a tableau. The use of time-lapse is a way to simultaneously collapse and capture time, engaging the past, present and future in one piece. Waterfall footage is generally slowed down, to create a calm mediative scene, here it has been sped up, a way for the artist to communicate her concern about the intense drought that is currently devastating parts of Australia and the region in which she lives, the Central West of New South Wales.
Provenance:
Nicole Welch, Black Box Projects_, MAY SPACE, 28 August – 15 September 2019
Stillness & Motion,Adelaide Perry Gallery, Monday 29 April – Friday 24 May 2019.
Transformation: the prelude, Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 24 October to 10 November 2018.
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, 13 to 16 September 2018.
Wildēornes Body
Wildēornes Body
time-lapse film, sound
10:34min 2017
Wildēornes (Old English): a land inhabited only by wild animals. Wildēorness Body reflects the inherent loss and uncertainty we now face for the natural environment, while simultaneously being a personal acknowledgement of the artist embracing her mortality. Swathed in a Victorian 1880s chantilly lace mourning shawl, the artist lay on a large mirror that reflects the sky and the canopy of trees above. Through the symbolism of the mourning shawl and the endurance of holding a pose over time, Welch aims to reveal the symbiotic relationship humans have with the natural world, and the fragility and strength of both. Welch spent several weeks at BigCi artist residency near Wollemi National Park where she researched and created this work.
Captured at Mount Horrible 2017
Provenance:
5th International Motion Festival, Cyprus 2019, European University Cyprus, 2019
Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 24 October to 10 November 2018.
Windmill Trust Scholarship 20th Anniversary Retrospective, Murray Art Museum Albury, 14 September to 22 October 2017.
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, 7 to 10 September 2017.
Wildēornes Land, MAY SPACE, 22 August to 16 September 2017.
Acquired by Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 2017.
Wildēornes Land,, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, 15 April to 7 May 2017.
Cementa17 – Contemporary Arts Festival, Kandos Museum, NSW, 6 to 9 April 2017.
Wildēornes Land
Wildēornes Land
Chantilly Wildēornes – swamp 2017
HD digital video – 15:01min
In the Wildēornes Land – Chantilly Wildēornes – swamp the mourning shawl is hovering above the surface of the water, transmuting a zoomorphic bird like quality as it interacts with its reflection. The shawl floats, swoops and turns as it emerges in and out of the frame, contorting, quivering; revealing delicateness and imperfection. Reflections captured in nature appear throughout Welch’s work, the natural surfaces acting like mirrors as they reflect light, creating illusionary representations of what they replicate. In this single channel video the actual landscape is juxtaposed against the illusory landscape reflected in the water with both existing simultaneously – parallel – as scenes within a photograph; an illusion. The skyscape within the skyscape becomes a double translation, a hall of mirrors that centralises the interpretation of the viewer.
Filmed at Ganguddy Swamp 2017
Provenance:
WEST OF CENTRAL, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, NSW, 2023
Stillness & Motion, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Monday 29 April – Friday 24 May 2019.
Wildēornes Land, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, 1 April to 7 May 2017.
East West
East West
time-lapse film, sound
3:30min, 2015
East West captures an antique mirror placed on the ground to reflect the sky as it transitions from day to night. Constructed from 3000 photographs taken over a twelve- hour period, the film acknowledges the sky as an enduring navigational device, historically used by humans to traverse the terrain of the earth from east to west, a tool to map, contest and claim. The clouds and stars reflected travel across the mirror forming a hypnotic sequence, encapsulating the recoded time (past), viewed in current time (present), while creating a space for contemplation (future).
Captured at Dark Corner 2015
Provenance:
Stillness & Motion_Adelaide Perry Gallery, Monday 29 April – Friday 24 May 2019.
_Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 24 October to 10 November 2018.
Silence & Solitude: select works from Eastern Interiors, Glasshouse Regional Gallery, 12 October to 2 December 2018.
Length and Breadth: new acquisitions from the Parliament House art collection, Parliament House, Canberra, 22 Sep to 13 Nov 2016.
Eastern Interiors: explorations from Bathurst to Albury, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 1 July to 14 Aug 2016.
Purchased by Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra, 2015.
Eastern Interiors: explorations from Bathurst to Albury, Murray Art Museum Albury, 12 Nov to 13 Dec 2015.
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, 10 to 13 Sept 2015.
Purchased by Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 2015.
Eastern Interiors: explorations from Bathurst to Albury, Brenda May Gallery, 1 to 26 Sept 2015.
Lament
Lament
time-lapse film
5:20min 2012
Lament records the deconstruction and reconstruction of a lit chandelier. Unlike my photographic work where the chandelier hangs above the landscapes of the interior of eastern Australia, making claim, here the chandelier is extracted, isolated and contained. The film records the deconstruction of the chandelier; each crystal being removed piece by piece. This chronicled decoding is a sorrowful lament and acknowledgment of the cultural and ecological loss that is now etched in the landscape. The imperial imperatives represented by the chandelier in the Illumination photographs are unravelling – crystal cultural threads are disappearing piece by piece. The reemergence and reconstruction of the chandelier in reverse suggests the relentless persistence of past ideologies on the perception of landscape and country in Australia today. Lament plays on a loop, cyclically revolving in search of resolution.
Filmed in the artist studio Bathurst 2012
Provenance:
Lament: Nicole Welch, Murray Art Museum Albury, 15 May to 12 June 2016.
Acquired by Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 2015.
Acquired by Murray Art Museum Albury, 2015.
Love. Lament. Loss, Black Box Projects, Brenda May Gallery, 29 Sept to 24 Oct 2015.
Lament, Black Box Projects, Brenda May Gallery, 15 July to 9 Aug 2014.
Illumination: New Work by Nicole Welch, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 10 Aug to 23 Sept 2012.
Night
Screening at Artereal Gallery, Sydney, 2024
October 18 – 16 November
Night, 2024 (preview)
HD infrared, monochrome, sound, aspect ratio 16:9
14:00min
Edition of 6, 2AP
Explore Unveiling the Night here
Wiradyuri Ngayirr Ngurambang – Sacred Country
Nicole Welch, Wiradyuri Elder Wirribee Leanna Carr-Smith, & Kate Elizabeth Smith. Drone capture by Henry Simmons.
An immersive moving image work exploring Wiradyuri Ngurambang Ngayirr. Wiradyuri Elder Wirribee shares part of the narrative of Custodianship of Country, collaboratively working with local artist Nicole Welch, whose work is linked to caretaking the environment.
This work explores shared understandings between First Nation and Non-First Nation women, connecting to the landscape from Tarana along the Wambuul/Macquarie River to Wahluu/Mt. Panorama, offering a space for contemplation toward the healing of people,
community, place, and shared stories.
Wiradyuri Ngayirr Ngurambang – Sacred Country (still)
HD video, sound, 2022
NFS
Provenance:
Bathurst Winter Festival, Tremains Mill, Bathurst, NSW
Yarrahapinni
Yarrahapinni (preview), 2019
single channel HD infrared time lapse – 3:21mins
50 inch screen, gilded frame
edition of 3
Provenance:
From the Studio, the Artists of Hill End, Hill End Art Gallery, NSW, 2023
Sydney Contemporary Presents, online Art Fair, 2020
Kangaroo Valley Art Prize, Kangaroo Valley Hall Gallery, Kangaroo Valley, NSW, 2020
Listening in the Anthropocene, H R Gallery (online event), Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, 2020
The Manly Dam Project, Manly Gallery & Museum, Syd, NSW, 2019/20
The Yarrahapinni time-lapse film records tidal flow into an estuary, symbolically referencing the rejuvenation and reawakening of a wetland environment. Recorded on location in the Yarrahapinni Wetlands National Park it is an affirmative work that celebrates our capacity to rebuild fragile ecosystems. The Yarrahapinni Wetland Restoration Project undertaken by the Water Research Laboratory team in collaboration with the NSW National Parks, has successfully rebalanced the hydrological and water quality conditions to naturally encourage the regeneration of what was a highly acidic wetland. It is now a thriving estuarine wetland with greatly improved bird and fish habitat and with regenerating mangrove and saltmarsh endangered ecological communities.
The scientists use of remote and on ground monitoring and sensing techniques, including satellite and infrared mapping was of particular interest to me, as they are technologies that I have used in my arts practice to record landscape, and to extend and collapse time. For wetland restoration projects this visual data is collected to analyse changes in wetland distribution, vegetation, tidal inundation and health of the estuary over time. Constructed from 4800 high resolution photographs captured over several hours the Yarrahapinni infrared time-lapse film mirrors the use of these scientific methodologies to speak to the potential of environmental restoration and rejuvenation. Framed within an antique gilded frame, Yarrahapinni references the history of landscape painting, drawing parallels across time.
The area is in the country of the Dunghutti and Gumbayaggir nations (a sharing place). I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging and give thanks for the opportunity to make work at this significant location.
Transformation
Transformation – journey (preview)
HD video
11:29min
edition of 6
Provenance:
Altered States, Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, NSW, 30 November 2019 – 8 February 2020.
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, Sydney, September 2019.
Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 28 August – 15 September 2019
Naked & Nude Art Prize 2019, Manning Regional Art Gallery, NSW, 7 September – 13 October 2019
Artstate Bathurst – 2018, Tremain’s Mill, Bathurst, 31 October – 5 November 2018
Transformation – Arrival (preview)
HD Video
4:51min
edition of 6
Provenance:
Altered States, Shoalhaven Regional Gallery, NSW, 30 November 2019 – 8 February 2020.
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, Sydney, September 2019.
Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 28 August – 15 September 2019
Naked & Nude Art Prize 2019, Manning Regional Art Gallery, NSW, 7 September – 13 October 2019
Artstate Bathurst – 2018, Tremain’s Mill, Bathurst, 31 October – 5 November 2018
Transformation – Journey & Arrival a moving Memento Mori is the latest instalment in Nicole Welch’s ongoing Self series, which was initiated as part of her Illumination works in 2012. In these cinematic works Welch uses her body as an apparatus and the landscape as a tableau. Undertaking performances in the wilderness Welch explores the symbiotic relationship humans have with the natural world to reveal the fragility and strength of both. As a continuation the Transformation footage sees the artist engage directly with the natural world through a journey undertaken (journey) , and a waterfall (arrival); a universal symbol of renewal, healing and ultimately, transformation.
Filmed over several hours on location during the heart of winter in the lower Blue Mountains, Transformation exposes the artists body to the elements. While the figure is Welch, the symbolism is universal. She embodies a lineage of women through time as a homage to all women – past, present, future. The journey sequence is a celebration of our unique connection to nature, our shared strength and resilience, the cycle of life, mortality – the arrival scene is an act of transformation, both mythical and personal, local and universal.
Transformation: the prelude
Transformation: the prelude (preview)
infrared timelapse – 9:41mins
HD video, sound, 2018
Constructed from 1000 photographs of a waterfall captured using infrared technology, the resulting hyperreal light spectrum and colours revealed are invisible to the human eye, symbolically referencing the notion of the unobserved. Water is the central theme in this moving image work, the waterfall is held in a perpetual loop, flowing and then reversing, moving several times faster than it naturally would. Nature has been manipulated and interrupted – the frenetic pace of the water gives the sense that something is about to happen, the stage is set; the scene a tableau. The use of time-lapse is a way to simultaneously collapse and capture time, engaging the past, present and future in one piece. Waterfall footage is generally slowed down, to create a calm mediative scene, here it has been sped up, a way for the artist to communicate her concern about the intense drought that is currently devastating parts of Australia and the region in which she lives, the Central West of New South Wales.
Provenance:
Nicole Welch, Black Box Projects_, MAY SPACE, 28 August – 15 September 2019
Stillness & Motion,Adelaide Perry Gallery, Monday 29 April – Friday 24 May 2019.
Transformation: the prelude, Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 24 October to 10 November 2018.
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, 13 to 16 September 2018.
Wildēornes Body
Wildēornes Body
time-lapse film, sound
10:34min 2017
Wildēornes (Old English): a land inhabited only by wild animals. Wildēorness Body reflects the inherent loss and uncertainty we now face for the natural environment, while simultaneously being a personal acknowledgement of the artist embracing her mortality. Swathed in a Victorian 1880s chantilly lace mourning shawl, the artist lay on a large mirror that reflects the sky and the canopy of trees above. Through the symbolism of the mourning shawl and the endurance of holding a pose over time, Welch aims to reveal the symbiotic relationship humans have with the natural world, and the fragility and strength of both. Welch spent several weeks at BigCi artist residency near Wollemi National Park where she researched and created this work.
Captured at Mount Horrible 2017
Provenance:
5th International Motion Festival, Cyprus 2019, European University Cyprus, 2019
Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 24 October to 10 November 2018.
Windmill Trust Scholarship 20th Anniversary Retrospective, Murray Art Museum Albury, 14 September to 22 October 2017.
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, 7 to 10 September 2017.
Wildēornes Land, MAY SPACE, 22 August to 16 September 2017.
Acquired by Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 2017.
Wildēornes Land,, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, 15 April to 7 May 2017.
Cementa17 – Contemporary Arts Festival, Kandos Museum, NSW, 6 to 9 April 2017.
Wildēornes Land
Wildēornes Land
Chantilly Wildēornes – swamp 2017
HD digital video – 15:01min
In the Wildēornes Land – Chantilly Wildēornes – swamp the mourning shawl is hovering above the surface of the water, transmuting a zoomorphic bird like quality as it interacts with its reflection. The shawl floats, swoops and turns as it emerges in and out of the frame, contorting, quivering; revealing delicateness and imperfection. Reflections captured in nature appear throughout Welch’s work, the natural surfaces acting like mirrors as they reflect light, creating illusionary representations of what they replicate. In this single channel video the actual landscape is juxtaposed against the illusory landscape reflected in the water with both existing simultaneously – parallel – as scenes within a photograph; an illusion. The skyscape within the skyscape becomes a double translation, a hall of mirrors that centralises the interpretation of the viewer.
Filmed at Ganguddy Swamp 2017
Provenance:
WEST OF CENTRAL, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, NSW, 2023
Stillness & Motion, Adelaide Perry Gallery, Monday 29 April – Friday 24 May 2019.
Wildēornes Land, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, 1 April to 7 May 2017.
East West
East West
time-lapse film, sound
3:30min, 2015
East West captures an antique mirror placed on the ground to reflect the sky as it transitions from day to night. Constructed from 3000 photographs taken over a twelve- hour period, the film acknowledges the sky as an enduring navigational device, historically used by humans to traverse the terrain of the earth from east to west, a tool to map, contest and claim. The clouds and stars reflected travel across the mirror forming a hypnotic sequence, encapsulating the recoded time (past), viewed in current time (present), while creating a space for contemplation (future).
Captured at Dark Corner 2015
Provenance:
Stillness & Motion_Adelaide Perry Gallery, Monday 29 April – Friday 24 May 2019.
_Black Box Projects, MAY SPACE, 24 October to 10 November 2018.
Silence & Solitude: select works from Eastern Interiors, Glasshouse Regional Gallery, 12 October to 2 December 2018.
Length and Breadth: new acquisitions from the Parliament House art collection, Parliament House, Canberra, 22 Sep to 13 Nov 2016.
Eastern Interiors: explorations from Bathurst to Albury, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 1 July to 14 Aug 2016.
Purchased by Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra, 2015.
Eastern Interiors: explorations from Bathurst to Albury, Murray Art Museum Albury, 12 Nov to 13 Dec 2015.
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, 10 to 13 Sept 2015.
Purchased by Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 2015.
Eastern Interiors: explorations from Bathurst to Albury, Brenda May Gallery, 1 to 26 Sept 2015.
Lament
Lament
time-lapse film
5:20min 2012
Lament records the deconstruction and reconstruction of a lit chandelier. Unlike my photographic work where the chandelier hangs above the landscapes of the interior of eastern Australia, making claim, here the chandelier is extracted, isolated and contained. The film records the deconstruction of the chandelier; each crystal being removed piece by piece. This chronicled decoding is a sorrowful lament and acknowledgment of the cultural and ecological loss that is now etched in the landscape. The imperial imperatives represented by the chandelier in the Illumination photographs are unravelling – crystal cultural threads are disappearing piece by piece. The reemergence and reconstruction of the chandelier in reverse suggests the relentless persistence of past ideologies on the perception of landscape and country in Australia today. Lament plays on a loop, cyclically revolving in search of resolution.
Filmed in the artist studio Bathurst 2012
Provenance:
Lament: Nicole Welch, Murray Art Museum Albury, 15 May to 12 June 2016.
Acquired by Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 2015.
Acquired by Murray Art Museum Albury, 2015.
Love. Lament. Loss, Black Box Projects, Brenda May Gallery, 29 Sept to 24 Oct 2015.
Lament, Black Box Projects, Brenda May Gallery, 15 July to 9 Aug 2014.
Illumination: New Work by Nicole Welch, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, 10 Aug to 23 Sept 2012.