Observations from the Unknown
Paige Elder
Drawing inspiration from rich histories of Feminist Witchcraft and occulture in Aotearoa, Paige Elder realises elusive emotional atmospheres in ink and oil. Observations from the Unknown reimagines themes from her postgraduate studies, exploring concepts of identity and orientation, spirituality, and perception.
The painted series plays with positionality, posing the potential for multiplicities of meaning, and shifting with their audience. Each liquid surface reflects our own emotions and revelations back upon us, conjuring connections coloured by personal experience and association.
Observations from the Unknown is perhaps more playful than previous bodies of work; pieces evoke a sense of vibrant yet intangible energy and whimsical theatricality in a beautiful object. Where past subjects implicated the viewer in a direct gaze, here, subtly luminous figures drift unperturbed, the strange Medusozoan inhabitants of some liminal realm.
Borne through isolated yet insular dreamworlds, shrouded forms are gradually revealed and recede into ambiguous spaces; trailing across lush pools, gauzy veils give shape to a movement or gesture.
A magnetic tension emerges in the neon-bright arrest of Elder’s candy-hued fields with the exquisitely modelled subjects, transfixing the audience in painstaking detail upon seemingly spontaneous poured-ink grounds, anchored in the Gothic curio by chain-link details.
Giving pause, and drawing the viewer irresistibly closer, constellations serve to locate both artist and audience in the gallery, and within wider processes of questioning. Through the motif of animated yet anonymous forms, the exhibition comments on ideas of ‘the Other’. Otherworldly outsiders are made central, operating free from conversations and confines of gender or expectation.
Works in Observations from the Unknown illustrate a conscientious practice of exploration and interpretation, woven with personal narrative and feminist theory - peeking behind the veil of mysticism, while leaving space for projection and new understandings.
Paige Elder is a recent Ilam Honours graduate, whose work has been featured in selected exhibitions across Ōtautahi, including as part of the group show Enigma at The Den in 2020.
