The Distiller hovers. It is part machine, part mythical reconstruction – a one-to-one scale model of an all-processing apparatus which hovers up in the eaves of the building like an observant and benign creature, gradually processing the contents of the museum, including, at times – the audience itself.
Using the form of a scale model it allows the audience to complete the possibility of its form in their own imaginations. Inspired in part by the working armatures and dioramas in the Natural History Museum in New York, this work likewise is the structure of the imagined and asks the viewers, upon their entry into the Museum to start suspending their disbelief and embrace the wonder of possibility.
Using standard museum classifications such as Geological, Botanical, Biological and technological The Distiller mutates all of the incoming information and displays the abstracted outcomes of its processing in the glass vessels which sit partly between museum display, and laboratory experiment.
This work is part of the Tasmanian government’s public art collection commissioned through the Tasmanian Government Art Site Scheme.
Tricky Walsh
Visual artists
Mish Meijers
Visual artists
Tricky Walsh is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is concerned with the integration of mysticism with scientific reasoning. Her work, which is architectural in nature, and broadly spatial in practice utilises the construction of concepts and devices which allow for the development of both physical and philosophical systems of discovery and invention. She is represented by Bett Gallery, Tasmania.
Walsh maintains a distinct solo practice in addition to her collaborative works with artist Mish Meijers. They have undertaken residencies in Jogjakarta, Paris and New York and have exhibited internationally and throughout Australia.
Mish Meijers is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice experiments in surface tensions: how one material conforms or abrades against the matter of another. Whether in actuality, or within conceptual content, she distorts the inherent worth and significance of her objects with regard to popular culture, gender determination and functionality, in an alchemic and at times discordant sensibility to construct her sculptural tableaux. Meijers maintains a distinct solo practice in addition to her collaborative works with artist Tricky Walsh.
Meijers + Walsh are in their eighth year of collaborative practice with their primary project: Henri Papin – the Collector; a superfiction which examines aspects of social anthropology through the development of an obsessive character and his psychological schema within a series of large scale sculptural installations. Meijers + Walsh have additionally undertaken other collaborations within the Six_a ARI structure which they initiated in 2007. Six_a focussed on the growth of experimentation within practice, the introduction of cross-discipline relationships and peer-based critical discourse for artists. External to the annual program, major collaborative projects included Battery operated Nextwave festival 2008, supercharger Nextwave festival 2010, Asia link ARI residency with HONF in Jogjakarta.
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