SERRIFORM Commission for CAT

The work uses geometric shapes to distort the appearance of the external building creating a new exaggerated facade which pays homage to the industrial area it which it is situated. Taking inspiration from sawtooth rooflines first designed in the 1800’s to bring light and air onto the factory floor and the faux triangular roofline within the CAT courtyard.  The work aims to question and play with its surroundings and query the physicality of the internal gallery space. The work not only distorts the architectural features of the site but changes with the physical conditions around it.

2015 - Frequency Penny Contemporary Hobart

The analogue tv signal was turned off on April 9,  2013. It somehow seemed like a monumental end.  The black and white patterns always seemed like a scene from space, a secret communication lost in translation.  The flickering screen reverberated left over radiation from the big bang 13.7 billion years before, the beginning of time denoted in the unrecognisable shimmering noise.

My work has always had the prevalent thread of the everyday, what we see around what we absorb, what we crave, what we dream. Moving away from figurative source material has given me the freedom to explore and re-visit painting. By pushing the black and white imagery and expanding the NTSC colour palette, I have forced the static signal to becomes part of my world. In a way the source has become indistinct to the adaptation; as with the source material itself gone when the overwhelming intensity of frequencies create the crisp television image.  Returning toacrylic sheeting after years not only links the works back to the idea of the screen but brings back the carving and physical approach to painting that provides me a pure engagement with the medium.

http://www.pennycontemporary.com.au/artists/artwork/carolyn-wigston

2014 - 10 YEARS 10 ARTISTS - HENRY JONES

October 2014

2013 - Story of The Creative - New York

September 2013

2012 - RE:CONSTRUCTION - Penny Contemporary Hobart

I love the over-the-top design principles of fashion houses, the artistry of the un-wearable fashion show that becomes abstracted down so that items become street-acceptable, wearable pieces. The tantalising adverts that not only - and sometimes not at all - show the sellable piece, but more then anything elevate the iconic brand. Often we see celebrities in the campaigns and I find the match of the exclusivity of brand with the rank of actor very appealing.

This body of work reflects my engagement with the imagery of high fashion. It uses re-appropriation and re-production as methods of image-making in a manner similar to the advertising agencies behind the fashion campaigns. I am visually smitten with the glossy vision and unachievable consumer goals dangled in front of me by magazines and Internet exposure. The work acknowledges how we covet brand and status while simultaneously fighting for non-materialism and a life of substance. My personal obsession with the artistry in design and the need to be free of conforming to superfluous consumerism come together in these works, suggesting that these two worlds are really not that different.

2009 - Freedom Solutions - Bett Gallery @ Raincheck

Consumerism has become a part of our urban identity. Culture, it seems can be achieved through material possession, and purchased from your local luxury retailer. In the western world of waste where new technology is replacing itself week by week, obsession with the new and the current, forces an never ending cycle of materialistic behaviour.

Stripped of the need to understand and left with the need to own, society yields to the fads of homeware outlets offering the appearance of style and success. Referencing directly from “lifestyle retailer’s” this series is a reflective, reduced commentary on western consumption.
 

http://www.bettgallery.com.au/artists/wigston/freedom/index.html

2008 Unsustainable Weight of Place - INFLIGHT/Watch this Space - Alice Springs

Unsustainable Weight Of Place is a response to the idea of 'place' from eight artists involved with INFLIGHT ARI in Hobart, Tasmania.

The exhibition involves two approaches: the first is a response to the artists own impressions of Alice Springs from a distance; and the second is a response to their direct experience of Alice Springs, formed during their stay.  Of course, the impression is a result of other experiences...and in only a few days, the experience is just an impression.

Kate Kelly, Benjamin Kluss, Paula Silva, Rob O'Connor, Cath Robinson, Rebecca Stevens, Mat Ward, Carolyn Wigston.

2008 - CONSTRUCT - Inflight Gallery - Febuary

CONSTRUCT is an investigation into the making and conceptualisation of artworks. The exhibition is an interactive installation exploring art commentary and the vocabulary used to describe contemporary art practice.

2007 - Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours – Painting - UTAS

This project examines the dichotomy of the interior and exterior self, using the form of architecture as a visual device for the construction of the imagery through the medium of paint.

In the case of many multi-million dollar makeovers the Southern Cross Re-development was fraught with problems and the revised budget compromised the architect's original vision. The intended goal was sacrificed and as a result the absolute vision was never fully realised. In my work I wanted to eulogize the architects lost dream by formalising and aestheticising the station. By paying homage to the original concept I wish to offer an epiphany if you will, a new dream that may encompass the passions lost. I approached this desire, ironically, through evidencing that my image-structures are impossibilities that, they too, can never exist in reality. By referencing idealised structures and the impracticality of them in actuality, the paradoxical becomes evident. So the reverence is bittersweet.
 

2007 - Sex and the City - Bus Gallery- Melbourne

Sex and the City explores ideas of desire, obsession, catharsis,
artifice, disorientation and consumption in contemporary society,
through the work of seven artists affiliated with INFLIGHT A.R.I.
in Hobart. Impulse and hastily made decisions have characterised
the 'coming together' of this exhibition, and in so doing, Sex and
the City echoes the instant gratification of a 'quickie' or the
seductive promise of a one night stand. Like many facets of contemporary consumer culture, popular television programs
claim to mirror ordinary life whilst actually manipulating emotional
responses for commercial ends. The artists in Sex and the City
mine, interrogate and re-configure this 'mirrored reality' to
present a new cognitive dissonance. When reality becomes 'reality'
who, or what, portrays the real?

http://www.bus117.com/

2006 Peripheral Village - CAST Gallery - November

Moving in a space that is somewhere between ghetto and the real world, the student artist creates in a bubble, sheltered from the outside by the safety net of the institution. Building upon the base of theory taught in these institutions, the 'pre-emerging' artist is faced with the dilemma of where their work fits in relation to an historical notion of art making, while also considering how it becomes the art of the future. As disparate art forms merge, established structures shift in a constant flux and form new spaces in which to create. Questions arise as to what has come before, the world in which we live and the technologies we have at our disposal.

This is the Peripheral Village, a place that is intimately disconnected from the art world.

The Peripheral Village is a space for these disparate art forms to congregate, a miscellany of modern art mutants that are products of an amalgamation of the art of the past hundred or so years. From boldly colourful abstracts that reference built and natural environments to black and white photographs of gossamer fabrics that explore feminine interpretations of identity, the included works each embody the interests and concerns of student artists at this time. Operating with a renewed interest in modernist art, but with the advantage of postmodernist strategies, painters become sculptors, musicians create video work and animation is presented as a painting in a gallery. There is no hierarchy between art forms, and no distinction between the now outmoded concepts of high and low art that fuelled the utopianism of Modernism.

Presented as a whole, rather than as singular works attributable to singular artists, Peripheral Village is a jumble of imagery and objects that reflect the constant stream of information we are faced with in the contemporary world. The exhibition is intended as a singular statement about the world in which we live and make art. As such, it is a reflection on the tentative reality that faces the 'pre-emerging' artist as we move into a new stage of professionalism.


http://www.castgallery.org/

2006 Emerging III - Salamanca Art Centre - October

Bold Behaviour
 

There is a simple geometric commonality between art and science, the grid. The grid has been used in art to view and understand complex visual idioms by breaking down the whole into smaller more decipherable pieces. Scientific concepts of measurement and analysis within the grid are a common device for an artist. A simple square lattice used in an experiment to observe behavioural instincts, determines direction, distance and speed, resulting in a hypothesis about personality and behavioural traits.

Moving across the grid the audience simulate animals within the lab confine. The distortion of the grid indicates fundamental flaws within the method, and conclusions of such experimentation.

2006 Transition - Entrepot Gallery


Transitional places specifically those of public transport offer opposing freedoms of anonymity and socialisation under the one roof of modern architecture. Referencing directly from the buildings and architecture provides a structure comparable to the connections and isolation found in society. Through transport the promise of excitement and freedom co-exist with that of the repetition of everyday life. The consistency of places of transport through out the world substantiates the recurrence of pattern and plane.