BIOGRAPHY
Growing up on Kangaroo Island, South Australia Annalise Rees graduated in 2004, completing a Bachelor of Visual Art with Honours, majoring in sculpture from the Adelaide Central School of Art through their scholarship program.
In 2005 Rees was the recipient of the Adelaide Bank Award for the most outstanding arts graduate in South Australia. She was selected to exhibit her graduating Honours work in the National Graduate Exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art and has completed mentorships through the Helpmann Academy and Arts SA with renowned Australian installation artists George Popperwell and Dr Nigel Helyer. She has been an artist in residence at Sanskriti Kendra, India, 24HR Art, Darwin, Newington Armory, Sydney Olympic Park, and Hill End, New South Wales and also at the South Australian Museum as part of the Inside SAM’s Place Program presented by Craftsouth.
In 2007 she was the first international artist to be invited to Japan to participate in the Daikanyama Installation Project in Tokyo and was awarded the Jury Prize. In 2010 Rees travelled to Montreal, Canada under invitation of the International Cartographic Association to work with the Arts & Cartography Working Group and both presented and published her project titled “Finding Place: mapping as process.”
Rees has been the recipient of multiple awards including the Adelaide City Council Award, the Duckpond South Australian Living Artist Award and the Mancorp Critics Choice Award as well as receiving funding on several occasions at both State and Federal Government level. She has been a finalist in the Paul Guest Drawing Prize, Whyalla Prize, Heysen Prize, Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize and the Forestry SA Wood Sculpture Competition. Rees exhibits frequently locally, interstate and overseas. In 2006 she was named in the ‘Top 10’ of South Australia’s most promising young artists to watch by independent curator Margot Osborne.
In 2010 Rees expanded her practice into the public realm through public art commissions for the Adelaide City Council and City of Salisbury. She currently lectures in drawing at the Adelaide Central School of Art and resides in Adelaide, South Australia, working out of Ripple Artist Studios, Port Adelaide which she established in 2005.
ARTIST STATEMENT
When does drawing become sculpture?
When does sculpture become drawing?
I am interested in how drawing can physically occupy and define the spaces we inhabit. I consider drawing in both two and three dimensional terms, as something which can occupy space and generate place, as well as being representational of it. I think of place as being somewhere we travel to as well as something we carry with us from one geographical location to another and perhaps also something of ourselves we leave behind.
My practice is largely sculptural and installation based, grounded in drawing with a profound interest in process and the language of materials. My work is influenced by architectural spaces, the urban environment and human interaction in public space.
My work explores notions of place and identity related to everyday lived experience. Gaston Bachelard wrote “thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived,” my work ponders this, drawing from my experience of the world around me while also projecting into the world of what potentially might be.
Everyday themes and materials are a means of connection and way of investigating social and cultural attitudes towards the familiar. I am particularly intrigued by two dimensional languages such as maps, patterns, diagrams and the written word used to describe the three dimensional world and our experience and interaction with space; as representations of reality and a means to identify and locate place.
I am interested in the concept of place and how it affects our sense of self. The idea of the Self is complex and varied, like the external influences by which it is shaped and formed. The symbiotic relationship between place and identity provides an opportunity to investigate the very nature of human activity and interactivity in our environment.
I work across a broad range of media incorporating drawing, sculpture, and installation. I am interested in the language and identity of materials especially those with apparent banal ‘everyday’ qualities, often overlooked and under celebrated. Through this investigation my work has developed into a form falling under the broad umbrella of installation based practice. For me installation provides the opportunity to question relationships between viewer, artist and artwork, the role of the institution or gallery, and current ideas about the value and position of art within society.
Architecture and the built environment feature heavily in my work as this is the ‘world’ that I predominantly inhabit, that of the city. Space is inherently what I am interested in and how it determines our interactions. Architecture both defines and organizes the spaces we occupy; interior, exterior and imagined. For me architecture and art provide a critical dialogue between ourselves and our environment, they are a trace of human thought, endeavour and invention.
My work ranges from intimate gallery works to large scale temporary and permanent sculptures in the public realm. I also frequently work with the community and see this as an important part of generating an ongoing dialogue between artists, the public and the spaces we all inhabit.
To date my work has responded strongly to place in both a cultural and geographical sense, being influenced from time spent as an artist in residence in Hill End and Sydney NSW, Darwin NT, India, Japan and Canada. In 2007 the urban environment and architecture continued to be of interest while developing work for the Daikanyama Installation Project in Tokyo, Japan, for which I was awarded the Jury Prize. In 2010 under invitation of the International Cartographic Association I visited Montreal and developed work in response to a digital database concerning environmental issues in the city.
Current works look at architectural spaces as signifiers of place, as a means of investigating the perceptual frameworks we use to identify ourselves within particular environments. Domestic spaces, urban environments, where we live, how we live. Exploration of materials; paper, cloth, and cardboard investigate possibilities and connotations of material language and process. The humble cardboard box in all its delightful banality and boringness, common to all, the magical gateway into childhood fantasies. Timber, brown paper and string. Fanciful musings, serious endeavours, temporary homes, moveable structures, emergency accommodation. Cubby houses, castles and beyond to purely practical means of storage. Home sweet home.
Making work that explores the symbiotic relationship between place and identity allows us all to be architects of the universe Bachelard speaks of and provides an opportunity to investigate the very nature of human activity and interactivity in our environment.