Linger (Gale Suspended), Artist Statement
Artist Statement
Linger (Gale Suspended) takes the familiar figure of Dorothy Gale and suspends her within a landscape in which she does not quite belong. Removed from Oz and placed against a mirrored adaptation of David Keeling’s Up Early Along an Old Road (2022), Dorothy becomes simultaneously recognisable and strange.
The Australian landscape is flattened, mirrored and transformed through kaleidoscopic symmetry and unmodulated colour. Rather than behaving as a convincing landscape, it becomes almost decorative: part pattern, part psychological space. Familiar elements repeat and fold back upon themselves, creating Rorschach-like forms that invite projection while denying Dorothy a stable place within them.
Dorothy is rendered tonally and glazed in violet, her wide-eyed gaze directed beyond the viewer. Her modelled body sits uneasily against the flattened backdrop, producing a tension between figure and ground, realism and artificiality. She appears present yet suspended.
The birds gathered in her arms hover between the real and symbolic, suggesting fragments of memory, attachment or emotional burden. Her unfinished basket, an object closely associated with Dorothy’s journey home, introduces something unresolved into this familiar image of belonging.
Linger uses a figure embedded in cultural memory to explore displacement, uncertainty and the instability of familiar imagery. Dorothy remains recognisable, but removed from the world in which we expect to find her, both she and the landscape become strangely unsettled.
Rachel Wolfe
29 April 2025
Rachel Wolfe is an emerging artist based in Hobart, Tasmania, currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Tasmania. With a diverse and evolving practice, Rachel explores various mediums and techniques to create captivating and thought-provoking works of art. To explore Rachel's latest projects and artistic journey, visit her website www.rachelwolfe.com.au or follow her on social media.
