Seeing/Scrying/Self-Portrait
Kellie Wells
16
November 2017
16
November
2017
1
December 2017
Seeing/Scrying/Self-Portrait considers contemporary self-representation in visual art alongside spiritual and devotional practices and rituals. The work explores inherited belief systems and how we frame personal truths when looking through the lens of our own established narratives. Presented is an image of the artist as a child, performing an iconic Catholic ritual, abstracted and magnified underneath the spherical lens of a large quartz crystal ball placed at its centre. This visioning tool distorts and amplifies the image, enacting a parallel symbolic relationship between sight and self-understanding. The work also entwines complicating associations between magic, witchcraft and women and the female image of organized and traditional religious rites of passage.
Seeing/Scrying/Self-Portrait considers contemporary self-representation in visual art alongside spiritual and devotional practices and rituals. The work explores inherited belief systems and how we frame personal truths when looking through the lens of our own established narratives. Presented is an image of the artist as a child, performing an iconic Catholic ritual, abstracted and magnified underneath the spherical lens of a large quartz crystal ball placed at its centre. This visioning tool distorts and amplifies the image, enacting a parallel symbolic relationship between sight and self-understanding. The work also entwines complicating associations between magic, witchcraft and women and the female image of organized and traditional religious rites of passage.