Irene Wellm

"In my recent practice I create large-scale works on paper, painting with gouache. The works are usually figurative, patched and pasted together using collage techniques during initial digital explorations. The subjects are male, female, animal, and sometimes a mixture of all these. Eventually they are scaled up and painted almost life-size in monochrome, which serves well to unite the complexity of the image.

I use the idea of the cut-out and the childhood game of paper dolls to communicate a multi-layered expression of the self in flux. The framework behind these ideas comes from my interest in the life’s work of psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961), and from fairy tales and mythology. The paintings are ambiguous, using playful and surreal concepts along with realist technique to create symbolic maps of the personal psyche."

Irene Wellm resides in Melbourne, Australia where in 2001 she completed a Master of Fine Art from the Victorian College of the Arts. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout a thirty-year career in Australia, and internationally in the United Kingdom, Korea and Germany. In 2001 when she won the Emerging Artist award at the Darebin LaTrobe Acquisitive Art Prize. She has been a consistent ...

2000-1 Master of Fine Art, Victorian College of the Arts
1999 Graduate Diploma of Visual Art, Victorian College of the Arts

Recent Solo Exhibitions:
2015 Second Self, Fort Delta, Melbourne Australia
2014 Out of this World, two-person show, Salve Art Gallery, Leipzig, Germany
2014 Preview, Chapman & Bailey Gallery, Abbotsford VIC

Recent Group Exhibitions:
2014 Geelong Contemporary Art Prize, Geelong Gallery, VIC
Basislager, Liviastrasse3, Leipzig, Germany
Dans le jardin des beaux-arts, Showroom Connex Leipzig-Thomaskirchhof, Leipzig, Germany
Asteriod, Winterrundgang Der Spinnereigalerien, Leipzig, Germany
2013 Zeit für Kunst - Großer Frühjahrsrundgang der SpinnereiGalerien Spring Gallery Tour, Leipzig, Germany
'Lesungen in der Spinnerei', LIA Galerie, Leipzig, Germany
'Rethinking Space', Wintersrundgang der SpinnereiGalerien, Leipzig, Germany
2012 'Somebody's Room', LIA Galerie, Leipzig, Germany
2011 Member’s exhibition, The Melbourne Club, Melbourne, VIC
Melbourne Savage Club Acquisitive Art Prize, Melbourne VIC
Korea & Australia 50 Years, Foundation Cultural Centre & Bom Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
Aura: The Haunted Family Image, L17 Art Space, Melbourne VIC
2010 Duke Gold Coast Art Prize QLD

Awards/Grants:
2014 Australia Council for the Arts – Visual Arts Travel Fund
2012 Australia Council for the Arts - New Works Grant
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