Video transcript
ARTEXPRESS 2023 - Body of work analysis - 02. Chelsea Cheang – The More the Merrier?

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MELANIE CASSIN: Hi. I am Melanie Cassin, Head Teacher, Visual Arts, from Bossley Park High School.

DANIELLE PALMER: And I'm Danielle Palmer, visual art teacher from Tempe High School. These paintings present very differently to those other paintings we were just speaking about. There is an energy in these paintings that I really enjoy. I feel like we have this frenetic energy of the people moving through these spaces in all 4 panels. And at first, this seems like it's a distant shot. But then these ones are even further removed back.

MELANIE CASSIN: This could be any city in the world, and that's what's really interesting about this work is that there's quite different perspectives on life and capturing life and the busyness of life. We have this sort of built-up urban setting, where there's so many little compartments of life happening.

DANIELLE PALMER: Yeah, stacked on top of one another.

MELANIE CASSIN: But together within one existence, and so I really enjoyed the different perspectives on the actual houses and where the people are living and then the actual people themselves within an aerial sort of view here. It's really taking home that idea of overpopulated cities and the coming together and perhaps even the issue of overcrowded populations and the things that happened during the world-- during COVID and that being problematic as well.

DANIELLE PALMER: And looking at the world perhaps from your window and looking out at the world and being removed from the world.

MELANIE CASSIN: Which is what we had to do during the last couple of years.

DANIELLE PALMER: The title, 'More the Merrier', when I first read that, it intrigued me because usually when students talk about overpopulation, they actually go down an environmental path, and it's quite negative, and it's about what we're doing to the planet is bad. But this title is alluding to the fact that having people around you can be a fun thing. So, it really is a response to being, I think, away from people that we've gone through with COVID.

But that sense-- there is a sense of joy in the colours that the student has used, the movement of the figures through the space. They look like they're celebrating or they're-- there's an energy in the movement. They're together. They're actually moving as a unit, like we would see with birds flying through the sky almost.

MELANIE CASSIN: Yeah, the title of the work definitely has sort of shifted my perspective on this work as well, as perhaps an environmental issue to a more personal issue, because there is a sense of celebration here with the colour. You have a bit of a muted background happening here with that sort of earthy tones coming through in the buildings. But that's just brought to life with these little bits of colour that are popping through. I love the repetition of the people climbing up the buildings. So, there's this connection between the panels, which are quite different in their approach and in their composition.

But the student has really cleverly connected aspects of each panel so that they work cohesively as a body of work, and their mark-making is quite unique. I really love this looser mark-making of a bit of the warm with the blue, those muddy sort of undertones coming through with the blue. So, really interesting colour choice. I'm really liking that.

DANIELLE PALMER: Yeah, I'm also loving the 3D elements, the slight low reliefs that are on the surface, especially these little cagey parts because-- and then you see the brands, and you feel like these people are like in little shopping trolleys heading towards these brands. But again, I'm not going, 'Oh, this is a bad statement about how we consume,' or anything. It feels like the energy of the city, an energy of-- a city that's back alive, a city that's back enjoying itself again. Yeah, that's what I get.

MELANIE CASSIN: I really love the textured elements, and you touched a little bit on that with the caged areas. I want to run my fingers over the panel, so it has that relief quality that I really enjoy. And the student has been brave. This is quite an-- well, it's an ambitious work because of the size. But to leave things slightly underworked or slightly a little bit rawer, but then having these really nice areas of sophistication with the little figures, that's pretty sophisticated to do that.

And to have that restraint and have that play between abstract and realism is quite-- it's quite interesting.

DANIELLE PALMER: They're stunning, the way they've got the raised ones, on this panel over here, where they're much closer to us on this side of the panel, and then they're drifting away from us. But you really get that sense, that they are drifting away from us and forming-- it's almost like they're merging in with this crowd over here.

MELANIE CASSIN: There is definitely a sense of belonging with this work.

DANIELLE PALMER: Totally, yeah. Yeah, it's alluding to place, time and place.

MELANIE CASSIN: It's a bit Fred Williams-like, in a way, where we're looking at an aerial view of these dots that come together to make a really interesting composition. You spoke about the movement earlier, too, Danielle. It's almost like a flock of birds coming across.

DANIELLE PALMER: So, you never know where the students have gone looking and searching, and I love being able to see little references to art history, and I think there is. There's also such confidence in this student's layering of the paint to build it up. So, the subtlety of what's in the background of these paintings--

MELANIE CASSIN: A restraint.

DANIELLE PALMER: Yeah, there is a restraint.

MELANIE CASSIN: To have that restraint and to leave areas intentionally unfinished and really soft really, as a viewer, as the audience member, we're able to draw our eyes into these little pockets of interest, and these other areas give our eyes a sense to rest, I suppose, in between all of the busyness. It's almost very much a representation of life, that there is ups and downs, and that there is busyness and there is calm. So, yeah, I think--

DANIELLE PALMER: If you squint at this panel, seriously, the front is great. You get that city in the front, but you have this peripheral of this very dense skyscraper-packed city in the background.

MELANIE CASSIN: Otherworldly a little bit too.

DANIELLE PALMER: It's so clever. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Very, very strong. I'd love to know how this little-- these little things came about, where this-- was it from your Fred Williams? Where did it come from? Was it a happy accident?

MELANIE CASSIN: Was it purely experimental that then branched into these other panels? It's interesting to say whether they started with the landscape, the cityscape, or they started with the people and what inspired the other. It just keeps opening up.

DANIELLE PALMER: Yeah, and they totally talk to one another constantly. These are-- there's conversations.

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