26 September - 24 October 20x20 in 2020
Michelle Le Dain’s work 20 x 20 in 2020 is her road to here. Not symbolically but literally, she is photographing the road ahead as it spreads out in front of her.
An exhibition, One and one is four: The Bauhaus photocollages of Josef Albers at the Museum of Modern Art (NYC) that Michelle saw in 2017 marked the beginning of this project that traces the road and the various directional marks “written” on it. She described it as “photographs of the path – of connections that have disappeared”. In part a diary, but rather than recording daily events she has articulated her passing as formal compositions. As such this collection of roads is an epoch of travel measured in a suite of graphic poems.
Michelle’s own epoch of travel began with her birth in Toronto, Canada. Her parents moved to Staten Island, the next island on from Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River. An exchange program with Sydney University in 1988 landed her in love with Australia. Eventually she moved here with her Canadian husband. Two children and a divorce left her thinking that her principal regret in life would be to not pursue creativity. She enrolled at the National Art School. With her Masters Degree complete a residency at Workspace Academy in Connecticut followed, which is when she went to MOMA to see the Albers' exhibition.
Her own collages are produced in the medium of hertime, on a computer in photo-shop. They juxtaposes graphic elements drawn from the real world that like the works of Albers make no references beyond the compositional phenomena at play on the surface of the work. Here beauty is a matter of poise, tension and inflection with a long history that is belied by the graphic immediacy of Michelle’s work.
Tony Twigg
Artist Statement
Michelle Le Dain is an emerging multidisciplinary artist from New York who lives and works in Sydney. She examines the possibilities of play, spontaneity and intuition as means of a manifold visual language across the fields of video, photography, installation and painting. In her ongoing project Roadwork (2017-) she reconfigures the ubiquitous signifiers of the urban landscape, such as found street markings and road signs into abstract photographic collages.
Michelle Le Dain graduated 2016 with a Master of Fine Art from the National Art School, Australia.
20 x 20 in 2020
Le Dain’s ongoing project Roadwork originated in 2017 while in the US on an artist residency after completing her MFA. This project evolved spontaneously through process and sequence. She set out on a 60-day morning run challenge to record and post a daily observation on Instagram using her Iphone. The Josef Albers exhibition One and One is Four: The Bauhaus Photo Collages (2017) at Museum of Modern Art, New York, was a huge influence to this body of work in its playful experimentation, perception and form. The project crossed over many cities and countries photographing road markings including New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Montreal, France, Japan, England Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
Covid-19 has taken this project out of its original form, confining it to Sydney. These 23 select images past and current represent the connections and memories with what we once had and what we are hopeful for again. Le Dain uses digital collage to experiment taking her palette directly from the road. Playing with line and colour, she uses her indoor studio space to engage directly with the outside world. She continues to find, follow and photograph painted road markings in and around Sydney until travel restrictions are lifted.
Michelle Le Dain
