Wish You Were Here Too

Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG) presents Kellie O'Dempsey's Wish You Were Here Too across our Digital Platforms.

Gallery/Library Forecourt

TAFE Screens, Ribbon Gang Lane

Wish You Were Here Too is a reimagining of my exhibition Wish You Were Here (2021-23). In this façade-specific iteration, readymade collages constructed from billboard poster strips – which O’Dempsey has been collecting for years – appear mountain-like and menacing. Meanwhile, a rendition of ghostly silhouettes of the artist hold their balance precariously, their movements softened by a stack of echoing frames. Nearby, mechanical-like fish with giant eyeballs for bodies float by without a care in the world. Wish You Were Here is an immersive installation of collage, video and Animation. The project began as a response to the pandemic's lockdown life. Uncanny household objects collide with uncertain landscapes. In search of progress, multiple figures attempt to travel, yet go nowhere. Figurative and abstract forms gently smash together as we all fumble for connection. Wish You Were Here and Wish You Were Here Too is an interdisciplinary work that transforms the isolation and endurance of compound d crisis into a mesmerising carnival of ghostly silhouettes. Through repetitive rhythm and monotonous loops, non-specific locations and an unspecified time, this work blends the physical and the psychological for a moment of hypnotising and joyful reprieve.

Image: Kellie O’Dempsey, Wish You Were Here Too, 2022-2024, video animation (still). Courtesy the artist and Jan Manton Gallery, Queensland.