2024

ISEA (International Symposium of Electronic Art) Brisbane 2024 by Kellie O'Dempsey

ISEA (International Symposium of Electronic Art) Brisbane 2024
Time Tracing (2020) & Wish you were here on VHS (2024)

Video Duration 15min

June 2024
Video Sample – Time Tracing

The Cube QUT Gardens

Time Tracing recreates the map lines of the Murrumbidgee river as giant water drawings in the earth, which–over time–move, extend and connect. Working in collaboration with local Wagga Wagga artists, this large-scale video work incorporates dance, movement and sound that simulate the power of the Murrumbidgee river catchment. This ancient and fragile ecosystem has held and traced story for communities throughout time; Time Tracing aims to honour the unique characteristics of the Murrumbidgee river, in all its all states; flood, drought and flow acknowledging the catchment’s significance to communities both past and present.  Filmed on the banks of the river at dusk, with Indigenous and non-Indigenous emerging performers of Wagga Wagga, the video aims to celebrate the river’s connection to the land and people it supports across time as a collision of moving bodies utilise lines and repetition. Commissioned by Wagga Wagga Council

Artist: Kellie O’Dempsey
Sound: Mick Dick
Videographer: Damien Jenkins from Next Inline Productions
Performers: Wes Boney, Zoë Hadler, Natasha Strimpf, Markus Wright

Wish you were here on VHS is an immersive video of collaged test patterns, glitches and moving figures that transports the viewer into an uncertain landscape. The Wish you were here series began as a response to lockdowns and has continued to develop with transforming elements of humour and oddity. In this version, swimming eyeball fish collide with unstable analogue geometry. In search of progress, multiple figures attempt to travel, yet go nowhere in this oddball world. Their figurative and abstract forms gently smash together as we all fumble for connection. Through repetitive rhythm, monotonous loops, remnants of the pre-, in non-specific locations and an unspecified time,  Wish You Were Here blends the physical and promises endless energy to keep trying in this weird and changing world.

Artist: Kellie O'Dempsey
Sound: Mick Dick
Augmented Reality & Animation: Helena Papageorgiou

Wish you were here (Grafton) by Kellie O'Dempsey

Wish you were here (Grafton)

Installation, 2024

Grafton Regional Gallery
17 Feb – 20 April 2024

Wish You Were Here began as a response to the lockdown life of the pandemic.

In this installation, uncanny household objects collide with uncertain landscapes. In search of progress, multiple figures attempt to travel yet go nowhere in this oddball world. Their figurative and abstract forms gently smash together to imitate how we fumble for connection. 

Through repetitive rhythm, monotonous loops, neon lights, remnants of billboard posters, collaged objects and an unspecified time, Wish You Were Here blends the physical and the psychological for a moment of hypnotic but joyful reprieve.

Wish You Were is an immersive installation of collaged works on paper, projected animation, sound and Augmented Reality (AR). 

Sound by Mick Dick and AR by Helena Papageorgiou.
Photos and Video by Sim on Hughes Photography

She Does (working title) by Kellie O'Dempsey

She Does (working title)

Installation, 2023

2 Dec 2023 to 18 Feb 2024
Noosa Regional Gallery 

Installation, video, furniture 2023
Artist Kellie O’Dempsey

Videographer: Jorge Serra
Sound: Mick Dick
Movement Consultant: Ruby Donohoe
Photographer: Warwick Gow

She Does (working title) gives visual form to the memory and experience of the liminal space between dying and death. In caring for someone exiting this life, Kellie O’Dempsey felt like they were a caretaker of memories; and the objects—cupboards, boxes, antiquities and personal effects—wherein these memories are infused. She Does (working title) uses these objects to explore the complex fragility, intimacy, exhaustion and boredom of this temporal space, when one is confronted with their own mortality via the death of a parent. Drawing on installation, performance and video, O’Dempsey ritualises care and nurtures relationality to quietly honour women’s unseen labour and question the value of care in a society that values capital.

Noosa Regional Gallery Director Michael Brennan

Kellie O'Dempsey is renowned for an installation practice that integrates projection, video, collage, architectural space, gestural line, performance and digital drawing. She Does draws together various aspects of this way of working to sensitively explore the gravity and responsibility of caring for the life and memory of another – particularly one who was once responsible for caring for you.

The development of She Does (Working Title) was supported by RADF (Regional Arts Development Fund) & the Sunshine Coast Council