Michael Wedd
For many years, I have been fascinated by medical imagery, looking beneath the surface of things at the atoms, microbes, bacteria, organisms and living environments that constitute both us and our planet. I have also had a longstanding interest in visual structures that appear to repeatedly occur in microscopic and macroscopic images.
Stripping back colour and working on a flat surface (as opposed to the easel), water became an essential precondition of the process. Considering that the biology of the planet and ourselves is largely constituted of H2O this seemed appropriate.
Our subconscious history is littered with allusions. Memories of things observed. Thoughts that float through time and space like disembodied fossils. Allowing them to rise from the depths requires subtle and sympathetic articulation. One way of achieving this is to submerge/emerge forms by manipulating the spaces around them. Images can then float, inhabiting multiple realities simultaneously, as opposed to being merely descriptive.
Click here for artwork by Michael Wedd
Exhibitions at Tacit
2024 Entering the Subconscious
In this suite of works, Wedd confronts the impulse to stimulate the viewer visually, painted as they were during the Melbourne Lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Those months in a drawn-out medical quarantine became for Wedd a deepening period of creative contemplation and sustained self-reflection. Turning his back upon isms and style trends while ignoring obligatory subjects and ‘correct’ political themes, the artist set himself to enticing the inquisitive eye, of stirring the seasoned imagination, of composing afresh.
The work chart a journey into Michael Wedd’s mental health, as well as new evolving techniques. A medium new to Wedd - inks - was chosen over traditional oils and prints, allowing for spontaneous, gestural and tightly controlled brush techniques. The subject matter shifts from abstract and organic to landscape, figurative and conceptual.
Exhibitions
solo
2024 Entering the Subconscious - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2021 Entering The Subconscious - fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
The Naracoorte Suites - Sandbox Gallery, Melbourne
2017 In My Beginning Is My End - PG Printmaker Gallery, Melbourne
2010 I Like Breathing Better Than Working - Yarra Sculpture Gallery, Melbourne
2009 New Prints - Calvin Charles Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona
2003 10 Years of Monoprints - Dante's Gallery, Melbourne
2000 10 Years of Drawing - Dante's Gallery, Melbourne
Surfaces - 69 Smith St. Gallery, Melbourne
Land and Sky - 69 Smith St. Gallery, Melbourne
group
2023 SUBSTRATE 23 - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2022 Editions 2022 Print Prize - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2021 Here Again - fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne
2020 20[2020] - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2019 Christmas Show - Sandbox Gallery, Melbourne
Editions 2019 - Tacit Art, Melbourne
2012 Recent Prints - PG Printmaker Gallery, Melbourne
2011 Rick Amor Print Prize - Montsalvat, Melbourne
2008 Works on Paper - Punta del Este, Uruguay
2006 Group Exhibition - Ochre Gallery, Melbourne
2005 Group Exhibition - Ochre Gallery, Melbourne
2002 Six Artists - Dante's Gallery, Melbourne
1999 Drawings - Australia Council Studios, Los Angeles
Penultimate - 69 Smith St. Gallery, Melbourne
Y2K - 69 Smith St. Gallery, Melbourne
8x8 - Roar Gallery, Melbourne
1998 A4 Art - West Space Gallery, Melbourne
Blue Stone Show - Fitzroy Town Hall, Melbourne
Postcard Show - New Linden Art, Melbourne
1996 A3 - Yume Ya Gallery, Melbourne
Working Art - Steps Gallery, Melbourne
Box - Craft Victoria, Melbourne
3 Years Group Exhibition - Ether Ohne Titel Gallery, Melbourne
Epoch - Yume Ya Gallery, Melbourne
1995 Trans Apparent - Ether Ohne Titel Gallery, Melbourne
7.22 Demi Diurnal - Ether Ohne Titel Gallery, Melbourne
1992 Myth and Ritual - Galerie Duemme, Genoa, Italy
In Bello Stile - Circolo Culturale Gastronomico, Genoa, Italy