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Marking time and place - Artist Profile: Michelle Frances Collocott

Michelle Collocott’s residential studio is located at 314 Abercrombie Street, Darlington. An artist of some renown, nationally and internationally, her work (spanning 50 years) incorporates painting, photography, collage, and, of late, horticulture, to express intimate concern for urban and rural environments reports Andrew Collis in the South Sydney Herald of February 2008.

Collocott has worked and exhibited in London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, Wollongong and Bathurst.

“I’m interested in relationships between the city and the bush,” she says. “I’m interested in climate, the shapes and shadows of the land, animals, fence-lines, textures, oscillations of colour. My works are like musical compositions, like jazz. I see various elements as musical instruments, each with a significant part to play.”

Collocott has spent much of the past 10 years exploring the qualities of land and light at her six-acre property near Oberon in western NSW.

3 Ponds Oberon is a multifaceted project comprising three series of different but related images. Series A (topographical) and B (meteorological) were exhibited at Bryanhooper Gallery in 2003. Series C (cerebral) will be exhibited over two shows, the first in October of this year at Wilson Street Gallery in Newtown, the second (works in progress) in 2009.

Collocott maintains meticulous documentation of her work, archiving aerial photographs, news clippings, postage stamps, journal notes and sketches, dried leaves in plastic sleeves – all manner of marks, traces of time and place.

In collaboration with Liz Buchmann at Newtown Fine Art Traders Collocott is currently building a website to showcase her rich and varied work. The website will be launched later this month.

What impresses, overall, is a sense of commitment to the image-making process, to creativity as both gift and task. Collocott’s work has a power to awaken senses and to inspire engagement with one’s own environment. - www.michellecollocott.com

Photo: Image #9, 3 Ponds Oberon, Series C, 2007

Source: South Sydney Herald February 2008 - www.southsydneyherald.com.au