Thank you so much for visiting. I’m Chelle…

As a fine art and conceptual artist I draw on photography as the most honest lens with which to communicate. I seek to mine seemingly ordinary experiences for collective threads, and emotional content that can often go unmet. Turning the lens on my own beginnings as a daughter, has led to an ongoing body of work- The Good Room. Applying the technique of Tableau Vivant to the tradition of Still Life, this series of photographs depicts showy domestic scenes that both dignified and veiled my mothers lived experience. Within these images tentative steps are taken to reveal fragments which she mostly hid from view, and which now find a home in our shared search for something more truthful.

For my mother, order and beautiful things offered visible testimony that she was rising above childhood scarcity.  Her external search for worth and recognition, left me searching too. I am especially interested in family relationships and place of origin as the most powerful realm for recovering truth, welcoming back the parts we have split off, and reclaiming greater wholeness with which to meet the difficult conversations this world demands of us.

Beyond this body of work I draw on my experience working as a counsellor for the past 10 years to highlight our shared humanity, capturing people, places and moments…sometimes in real every day environments, and sometimes in deliberate staged settings. I hope my work, whether it be the light and frivolous or confronting and serious, invites people to reach beyond the daily clamour of this crazy life, to discover within themselves space revealing love, fragility, stillness and beauty.