Kelsey Ashe - The Deep Green Sea

The Deep Green Sea is a major solo exhibition by Kelsey Ashe, presenting an immersive installation of expansive screen prints and short film. Ashe has created a surreal world of dark fairytales upon coastal seascapes, which are recognisably Antipodean, yet inflected with strange ecological allegories of the artist's imagination. Meticulously screen-printed in botanical inks and photoluminescent pigments at a giant scale, the oceanic-gothic artworks fittingly fill the large inner sanctum of the former Catholic Chapel at BRAG. Ashe envisions the sublime and mysterious within landscapes by drawing on her studies in Japanese aesthetic philosophy and print-making techniques. The artist seeks instances of yugen; a Japanese word referring to the ‘dark, tranquil colour of the universe and the profound awareness of this which triggers a deep emotional response’.