About the work

The work shown in this exhibition is part of Claudia Chaseling’s extensive series she entitles ‘Small Paintings’. Sky Can Be More Blue, created during the pandemic lockdown of 2020, is a dream of better days and more open times; a way of traveling without travelling during periods of closed borders. This work is no less powerful for its diminutive scale. The ‘Small Paintings’ were begun in 1998 when the artist was living in NY, and resumed throughout her diverse periods of living abroad. Painting over postcards she collects throughout her life’s journey, Chaseling approaches this aspect of her practice as a kind of diary, inscribing each work with text relating to her experiences.

Claudia Chaseling’s predominant practice is that of wall-size paintings and large-scale site specific installations. The visual language Chaseling has created and called Spatial Painting and the imagery in her work consists of distorted landscapes, poisoned places, mutated creatures and plants whose deformation is caused by radioactive contamination and environmental toxins. A decade ago she created the graphic novel animated on video, Murphy the Mutant, which became an anchor for her work to follow. This narrative work effectively describes her ongoing fixation upon the enduring environmental devastation of nuclear waste and munitions, transposing into a paradoxically sweet atomic allegory, akin to a children’s book, the horrific aftermath of the way we wage war in the modern world. The diverse body of works encompassing Claudia Chaseling’s practice, from Spatial Painting to graphic novels, watercolor, sculpture, print, and video, all deal with the facts and the consequences of today's socio-political systems and their effects on the environment.

Chaseling’s work, in its entirety, forms an ongoing point of resistance against the global arms industry and the nuclear chain which leads to the radioactive contamination of depleted uranium munitions and their toxic aftermath. Her work results from meticulous research into historic and ongoing ways in which we continue to poison our planet with the byproducts of wars and nuclear accidents. Using her visual language of Spatial Painting to both inform and protest about the fatal status quo of global energy and arms industries, Claudia Chaseling has for over a decade persevered in focusing our attention on the pernicious weapon of mass destruction which is depleted uranium.

Bio

Claudia Chaseling is an international artist, born in Munich, Germany. She received a Masters degree in Visual Art, from the University of the Arts in Berlin and a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy in Visual Art) from the Australian National University in Canberra. Chaseling is known for the practice of Spatial Painting, site-mutative biomorphic abstract murals, which cover walls, floors and ceilings. These works are drafted from one particular viewpoint, to distort and dissolve the familiar geometry of the space, whilst carrying socio-political meaning. Claudia has exhibited her work in over sixty solo and group exhibitions, notably in the United States, Australia and Europe. Her work has been featured in the X-Border Biennial, Finland; the Luela Art Biennial, Sweden; and the Lorne Biennial, Australia; amongst others. Recent projects include solo exhibitions at Art Gallery Nadezda Petrovic, Cacak, Serbia; Wollongong Art Gallery and Yuill Crowely Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Kunstverein Duisburg and Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, and most recently with MOMENTUM in collaboration with the Australian Embassy, Berlin, Germany; further with Art in Buildings in Milwaukee and New York City, USA, of which the NYC exhibition "radiationscape" has been featured in the New York Times. Major grants and scholarships received continuously – include those of the German DAAD and Karl Hofer Society Award; the Australian Samstag Scholarship, Australia Council for the Arts Grant, artsACT Grants, IGNITE Career Fund and the Postgraduate Award. Claudia Chaseling has taken part in various international visiting artists programs and residencies, among others at Art Omi and the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York, at the Texas A&M University and at the Australian National University. The Verlag für zeitgenoessische Kunst und Theorie Berlin published her first extensive monograph in November 2016.