Description

Niche is a primal experience.

In stepping into each niche, we enter a remembered space of species. Each niche invites an encounter with involuntary art created by fauna.

Niche #1 offers a social sanctuary. From within it we find ourselves amid an exhibition of locally created structures. It shifts the language of habitat so that we live its mystery and vitality as contemporary art.

Niche #2 tenders a place of refuge and intimacy .It is a hideaway island in a field of subterranean havens. It shifts the art of habitat so that we live its repose and calm as intimate refinement.

Both propose an experience of ‘Umwelt’.

Credits

Concept, direction, niche construction: Jude Anderson
Photo documentation: Gilles Lapalus
Niche construction: Nici Wright

With heartfelt thanks to Ralph Dixon for sharing his knowledge of local flora and fauna and expertise.

Artists

Jude Anderson creates and directs intimate to large scale performances and participatory installations that often respond to sites. Her work has been presented by major European festivals and commissioned for remote regions nationally and internationally. She is artistic director and founder of Punctum – an artist-run Live Arts organisation based in Castlemaine, Victoria.
www.punctum.com.au

Nici Wright is a fearless mixed medium artist based in Castlemaine. Her works have won several awards and move across different mediums, genres and fields from design, ceramics, fine arts, sculpture, installation, materials, fashion, found and recycled, teaching and facilitating and range from the wearable to large scale outdoor installations. Her work is held in private collections in Germany, the U.S.A and Canada and she often collaborates with Jude Anderson.

Gilles Lapalus is widely renowned for his winemaking and vermouth infused with Australian botanicals. He is also an avid photographer whose work has been the subject of group exhibitions in Burgundy and Paris. Based in Castlemaine, his photography and vermouth in turn inform Niche #1 and #2.