Award-winning photographic artist Lilli Waters will unveil her latest solo exhibition, Orpheus, from 2nd to 26th February at Metro Gallery, Armadale, Melbourne.
Orpheus features a series of 10 large-scale photographs and moving image artworks, which were elaborately constructed underwater using shells, fish and flowers, and the female form. The striking subjects emerge from a dark waterscape, to create an other-worldly ethereal visual.
Offering a nuance mix of hope and despair, promise and foreboding, this series of photographic vignettes were created during a lockdown reprieve in mid-2021, when Melbourne residents thought they were at last free from government restrictions. While evoking a sense of entrapment, this series also invites the viewer to move beyond the darkness and towards the light.
Among the key works in the exhibition: Flowers emerge out of the darkness. These works are reminiscent of the Dutch masterpieces of the 17th century and a reminder of the transitory nature of everything. Floating alongside the blossoms are jewel-like creatures and shells, dramatically shrouded by golden nets and sheets of suffocating cellophane.
“We are living through an age where our lens on the world must constantly shift and refocus as new ideas, crises, social movements and the natural environment rapidly changes,” says the artist Lilli Waters.
A level of poetic consciousness is required to navigate this complex new world and at-times hopeless landscape. Orpheus was a poet, a prophet and a musician in Greek mythology who at the end of his life worshipped no god but the sun.
For these images, I wanted Orpheus to be a woman who is glistening oracle-like, asleep on a dark sandscape. The viewer is invited to embrace their own mortality and energy for change simultaneously. To dare to be one’s own illumination—like a transient point of light in a night sky,” says Waters.
Exhibition details:
Orpheus runs 2 – 26 February
Metro Gallery: 1214 High Street, Armadale. Entry is free, opening night is Wednesday 2 February 6-8pm.
For more information visit: http://www.metrogallery.com.au/
For artist statement and high resolution images, interviews of information, please contact: lilli@lilliwaters.com
Waters’ work has featured in magazines such as Elle, Vogue Living and Real Living, as well as on the silver screen in Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. Waters was featured in the ABC documentary series Art Bites: Mirror in 2018.
Category : Lilli Waters