Travel Rite: New works by Michelle Donald
Travel Rite – 2008
New works by Michelle Donald
Travel Rite explores the desire to travel and see the world.
In this latest body of work I have chosen to document/ritualise my own travel experiences with a series of mixed media
works and installations.
While engaged in a journey of self discovery as we embark on an OE, we often remain an outsider, a voyeur, a tourist in
each place we pass through.
Significant moments embedded in our psyche can change our outlook on life as a whole, but once the journey is complete,
what are we left with? Maybe a tick list of countries, places and sites we have always dreamed of visiting. Perhaps a
collection of memories represented by an assortment of memorabila, tickets, maps, brochures, and photos that are seldom
looked at yet seemed so important at the time. Images that lose their reference to time and place, each siginificant
moment blurring into each other.
We become hunters of the authentic experience, collectors of images that are other than our own daily existance. For the
intrepid traveller there can be an awarness of our own luxury, wealth and waste, when faced with situations and ways of
life that we find difficult to understand and often challenge preconceived romantic ideals of travel, exploration and
tourism.
Included in the show is a piece called 'Overlay' which was exhibited in the latest Wallace Art Awards in Auckland, which
was an exciting event to be a part of.
To view a small sample of some of the images please visit the Thistle Hall website www.thistlehall.org.nz/gallery.htm
Michelle Donald
ENDS