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Mirnong ( Yam Daisy ) 2023 is an interactive, permanent site percific artwork
Timber and Steel
3 x 300 cm diameter x 300 cm long
Global Art Projects deliverd the Great Victorian Rail Trail Art Installations project for Mitchell, Murrindindi and Mansfeild Shire Councils, with funding from the Victorian Goverments regional Tourism Investment Funds.
The three structures that make up the artwork celebrate the importance of the Mirnong plant to the taungurung peoples on whose country this artwork resides.
The pieces are designed to be interacted with, offering respite on the journey along the trail, but also an opportunity to view the surrounding country through the aperture of the mirnong Flowers.
Working in Collaboration with Taungurung Woman Sammy Trist who shared her cultural knowledge on the Kulin's woman story of the Mirnong by using the South eastern line art technique to burn the words in language into the sculpture.
‘ Each mirnong plant had 3 tubers, the grandmother the daughter and the granddaughter. The Mother was taken to eat while the grandmother was left to nourish the granddaugter for the following harvest’
  • - Framed ladscape

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Sound Shell 2022 an Immersive, Permanent Public Art work
Cast Aluminium, stereo sound
H 2.6 x 2.4 x 200 cm
Sound recorded and produced by Hayden Ryan, spoken by Uncle Mik Edwards and N’arweet Dr Carolyn Briggs AM
Commissioned by Karingal Hub, ISPT and managed by McClelland, developed in consultation with Bunurong land Council Aboriginal Corporation, Sial Sound Studios at RMIT University and Fundere Fine Art Foundry.
Sound shell reflects the shape of a Turbo or Turban Shell, which is commonly found on the Mornington Peninsula and culturally significant to the Bunurong people of the Karingal area.
Made from Aluminium on a magnified scale, sound-shell plays a beautiful soundscape of what you might hear when holding a seashell to your ear, along side stories and cultural history from Aboriginal elders.
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Mirrored lair 2022 390 X 150 X 120 cm. Charred Western red cedar, steel and sea shells.
In Mirrored lair Wigley references the Rorschach test, a widely known psychological tool developed early last century where a subject’s interpretation of mirrored inkblots may be analysed to develop insights into a subject’s character and emotional functioning. Mirrored lair folds the 2 dimensional into a 3 dimensional structure offering the viewer perceptual insights into the mirrored images where body and architecture and the conscious and the unconscious create a charged barrier between the interior world and the exterior world of the exhibited sculpture work.
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Unfolding space around me 2022
Materials: Western red cedar and pigmented Aqua oil, Steel and mirrored SS
H 270 x W 120 x D 100 cm
With the proximity and sounds of Luna park the work will become site responsive, reminiscent of a carousel through which frames of Kaleidoscopic fun mirrors create spatial illusion; exploring where space stops and starts through material form - “Space” and geometric pattern - “Time” .

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Rorschach lll 2021
Charred Western red cedar and steel 380 x 300 x 50 cm
In Rorschach lll, Wigley references the Rorschach test, a widely known psychological tool developed early last century, where a subjects interpretation of mirrored inkblots may be analysed to develop insights into a subjects character and emotional functioning.
By inviting the viewer to perceive the world through her Rorschach windows, the artist subtly subverts the “test” to offer perceptual insights into the self in connection with the living world all around.
  • © Rorschach Test 1921

    © Rorschach Test 1921

  • © Andy Warhol 1984

    © Andy Warhol 1984

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Folding space around me 2021
Natural western red cedar ss hardware
H; 150 x variable to 150 x 50 cm
The work is made with the intention for it to become a personalised sculpture, by being folded and unfolded in ways that work in ones space that create new spaces within the existing space.
Inside looking out.
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Night Moves 2019 - 2020
Western red cedar and steel
350 x 110 x 50 cm / 250 x110 x 50 cm
These series of works are based on the ancient pitch symbols of mirrors and combs a metaphor of vanity. Exploring the contempory mirror selfies and linking them to ancient times, folk law and world mythology.
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Nailed Works 2019
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INVISIBLE 2018
Materials : Yellow tulip poplar, composite materials and pigmented aquaoil.
370 x 240 x 140
The work explores the theme of invisibility, predominantly the relationship between nature and culture, and how culture is superseding nature to the point of its invisibility.
The work also investigates my personal feelings of invisibility as I age. I feel there is a connection between my invisibility as a woman and the invisibility of nature. Women and nature, being the foundation of all life, struggle to find a place of importance within culture; which is traditionally perceived as the realm of man.
Created by the assemblage and painting of an aged timber, probing the internal aesthetic relations between sculpture and painting.
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RITUAL 2016
Poplar, cedar and pigmented aquaoil
500 x 100 x 100 cm
The ritual forms are made from a giant poplar tree-reclaimed from Government house Victoria circa 1840s
I was inspired by the towering Ambrym slit gongs, that are made by hollowing out a tree trunk through a very thin slit, when the edges of the slits are struck with a wooden beater the gong resonates with deep sonorous tones the long vertical slit represents the mouth through which the ancestors voice emerges as sound, when the gong is played.
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Knucklebones series 2016 - 2018
Cypress, Steel, Aquaoil, Glass safety spheres copper clouts.
Height 200 cm Length 270 cm Width 250 cm / Height 270 x 150 x 150
The Use of colour and embedded reflective materials into Biomorphic shapes is a continued exploration in my sculpture work that focuses on materiality as the basis of the aesthetic experience.
“Knucklebones, an ancient game uses the joint bones of animals in the elaboration of many different game narratives, and calls attention to the universal human impulse to see the possibilities for imaginative play in whatever happens to be at hand. Here the disproportion of the ‘Human Player’ versus the Jacks at hand, is an impulsive, appropriation of biomorphic shapes that come, through an unconscious process, to embody personal communication.!
Often, for me this intuitive process attaches itself with great tenacity to “Play” with elements like the “Knucklebones”. It’s accrued history allows me rich associations to “Play” within my own search for personal meaning through Sculpture.
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Labyrinthine Totem
Cyprus Pine, galvanised bolts, aqua oil
730x60x50cm
The work investigates the visual fusion between the natural form and constructed creation.
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The Tudors 2018
Scale - 226 -183 - 140 Materials ; Oregon, steel and pigmented aquaoil
The work is made using the MODULAR scale an anthropometric scale of proportions devised by Le Corbusier.
Painted in Tudor style, the grouping of forms play out love parodies.
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“CONQUEST” 2015
Location: Private Collection, Ballarat Vic “ CONQUEST “ (Trophy Series )
The Work was made from a salvaged trunk of a 180 year old Oak tree, hollowed out and carved to a smooth tactile finish. The use of metallic leaf embedded into organic forms is a new addition to my work of salvaged trees, where the organic shape’s are treated much like symbolic objects, abstracted in contrast with platonic forms, opening up a new area of exploration into time and displacement and the relationship between the natural and the unnatural .
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“ The Crossing “ 2014
Location of Work : Queens Cliff Ferry terminal, Queens Cliff Vic.
A focal point in the new ferry dock, Totemic forms silently observe the coming and goings of peoples crossing the sea. The works are carved, charcoaled cypress the heights are variable to 6 meters.
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“IRENE” 2013
Mt Buller Sculpture Award. Charred Cypress and steel.
700 x 300 x 150cm
Ever since I was a child the Japanese painting “Great Wave Off Kanagawa” by Artist Katsushika Hokusai has caused me great fascination, when I look at it intense emotion wells up in side of me. The painting is of a giant wave with tiny boats being tossed about, surrounded by snow capped peaks the looming scale of the wave transfixes me and looks about to engulf the whole world it seems, or is it just the ever looming possibility that it could and we are all little boats being tossed around by a big wave. The awesome scale of Mount Bulla and surrounding landscape ignite the same intense emotion in me. I am interested in producing a work in response to the landscape that responds seasonally within the landscape. The summer months a charcoal wave creating a looming canopy throwing shady dappled light, in the winter as snow falls and snow drifts build the work would become an icy bejewelled cave.
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EDDY 2013
Cedar and steel
8600cm
The sublime art movements philosophy on the “feeling” of the sublime, looked at ‘turbulent nature’ — the pleasure from perceiving objects that could hurt or destroy the observer.
Eddy appears to originate from the sky with the drama of a natural force, evoking a sense of fear and pleasure.
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Fingers Crossed 2012
Cypress, gel medium, pigment, MSA Varnish
7700x100x100 cm
Expresses a hope that all goes well with man & nature
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“ PHOENIX “ 2011
Heights variable to 800 cm
Location: Private Collection, Flinders Vic.
Phoenix In literature is a symbol of death and resurrection, a metaphor for this work. The work came about when a friend whose property was to be demolished, called to say I could come over and choose a few of her trees, the only ones to be saved on the whole clearing project for the new peninsula link freeway, thousands of them to be chipped none were to be recycled or milled.
I got to walk among the still living giants and choose a few limbs leaving an x mark.
A few weeks later all the others were chopped down and fed into enormous tree eating machines spitting out the chips.
Saved and transformed, the momentous objects strength, courage and sorrow rise with in the landscape.
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Spires 2011
Height variable to 10 meters
material: Cypress pine and pigmented Aquaoil.
The grounds of ELGEE PARK contain a great selection of trees in many shapes and sizes, individually or as a group trees are commanding structures, they don’t simply work well in the space they are the space.
In 2011 Christabel was invited by Bailieu Myer to use some Cypress trees that had been cut down at Elgee park this invitation led to the creation of “ SPIRES” three very tall vertical forms that visually relate, almost bowing deferentially to each other as they quietly lean inward, linear slits filter and penetrate light.
Christabel has written that the work is honouring the tree through the transformation of carving inverting and assemblage into an abstract version of their former glory, where my inspiration and awe originate.
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The Guardians 2015 - Ruby Rose and Prue 2010
Location : Rosebud Secondary Collage Arts Centre
Cypress and pigmented Aquaoil.
Heights variable to 600 cm
The works were all made in collaboration with year 10 students of Rosebud secondary college.
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Ululation 2009
Cypress pine, pigment and creosote.
Size variable to 600 cm
This series of work is a reflection on the duality of my experiences working with terminally ill children.
Where there is fragility there is strength, loss heralds quite heroism, people grouped and spaced within the experience.
Each timber contains its own timeline, its memory of place.
Like illness, the knots dictate where and how.
A tactile relationship exists between us, resisting and yielding.
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Collage and Painting