Mean Streak - a solo show by Saira Ellen K. Spencer

Mean Streak is the second solo-show by emerging Denmark-based artist Saira Ellen K. Spencer, running from Friday July 22, from 6 to 9pm, and continues until Monday July 25 open daily from 11am to 3pm at Pia Gaze Studio.

Saira paints out of a shipping-container studio amongst Karri-forested wetlands, on an 18-acre semi-self-sufficient property. A self-defined naturalist and surrealist, Saira converges the macro and atmospheric worlds directly surrounding her studio in the Denmark region of Owingup-Kordabup-Gnowerumbup, colloquially known as “The Rivers”, uniting the tangible and intangible as one.

'Blood and Marrow' - Saira Ellen K. Spencer

Currently working primarily in acrylics, graphite and charcoal; water-manipulated textural effects are a signature feature of Saira’s work. She uses fleshy pinks generously alongside colours, textures and shadows that signal the seasonal changes of her forest locale.

Mean Streak is a collection of 12 works on paper, canvas and board, shown at the newly-launched events space Pia Gaze Studios in Perth. The exhibition runs from July 22 to 25. In Mean Streak, Saira has appropriated personalities, forms and textural details from the flora, fauna of her immediate environment and the people of her local community in order to draw visual and symbolic parallels between the tension and shifts that occur in a re-wilded world with the inherent messiness of social and emotional upheaval.

'Release' - Saira Ellen K Spencer

Through manipulations of paint-tinted-water; layers of a witches brew of acrylic, graphite, charcoal, ash, sand and/or glue, and restrained, considered mark-making- Saira has evoked the jagged edges of pitted coffee rock contours, the chaotic movement of startled emus and sun-bleached bone to create a series of a mixture of small & large scale paintings that ask the viewer to denounce “Good Vibes Only”.

Borne out of emotional entropy of weathering devastating familial grief, as well as local and global chronic crises; the works in Mean Streak are an ode to pure frustration, utter fascination and the strange catharsis of surrendering to anger whilst lamenting those who cannot or will not do the same.

Pia Gaze Studio is located at 297 Lord Street, in Perth. Find out more here.

See more art here.