Andrea Selwood

Andrea Selwood, born in 1968 in New Zealand. Studied at Otago Polytechnic School of Art, Dunedin (NZ). Gained a MFA at Edinburgh College of Art, Herriot-Watt University, Scotland.  Andreas work spans two decades developing themes of People and Place. She attempts “summary impressions of culture” repositioned within the electronic and digital age. In summing up a place, Andrea gathers associations of each site locale and gauges environmental extremes - a thin slice cross-section of a broad spectrum.

Andrea uses tactical mapping as a symbolic process to discover and regenerate her subject matter. In ‘+/- = e’, she explored her own Scottish heritage, cultural stereotype and exchange between the sister cities, Edinburgh and Dunedin. She has accessed museum archival collections to create long scroll artworks which simultaneously mark time, plot distance, chart space and geographical location. By sampling, remixing and layering imagery, Andrea examines new world nostalgia for the past by degenerating documents reprographically in the stories retelling. 

Andrea recently realigned her art practice to address local community and revived her awareness of water ecology. Recent work, Flow Chart arose from her involvement in ‘Raising the Creek’, a stream restoration project and community based initiative located in Houghton Bay, Wellington NZ. Her time-based drawing was presented at the Water Wheel Symposium (March 2014) allowing ideas to be discussed in a global forum and coincided with Wu Mali’s The Plum Tree Creek Project. Her artworks are variously understood as an ‘artifact’, map or record of lost memory. Flow Chart references the scientific litmus test where colours indicates the PH content of the local water quality. These environmental indicators check our sense of equilibrium and remind us of our urban city environment.

Andrea continues these connections between individual and global neighbours; setting her own small backyard coastal model against the larger scale model of Taipei city. Andrea will investigate The Plum Tree Creek lost river scenario - subject to increased urbanisation, now re-considered within the post-industrial age. Her research of the Asian tradition of scroll painting sits alongside historical and scientific data of Plum Tree Creek. She will engage with the Danshui landscape and riverside community in the collecting of local stories.

Andrea in Water Wheel Symposium (March 2014):
http://water-wheel.net/media_items/view/4360
http://water-wheel.net/media_items/view/4364