Meredith Russell
(B.A. Fine Art., M.A. Visual Art, Adv.Dip. Live Design)

Meredith is a visual artist and set and costume designer with over 25 years experience working, teaching and exhibiting in a variety of media in visual and performing arts. She has taught Painting, Drawing, Foundation studies, Concept, Design studies and Set and Costume Design at the Adelaide College of the Arts and has worked as ‘Artist-in Residence’ in many primary and secondary schools. In her art practice, she has progressively explored the dynamic energy associated with movement of the human form in space, and this has led to a fascination and passion for modern dance as a focal point for visual expression. This relationship with dance and performance has enabled her to work with choreographers, musicians and artists in a collaborative working environment, integrating collective skills into meaningful performances.

Meredith’s work utilises her research in traditional Indian dance theories of movement and time, and the concept of sacred space as it relates to theories of ‘place-making’ in post-modern dance. Her masters degree research led to new roles of artistic director and production manager, as well as designer for the large outdoor community dance event, ‘Circling the Square’ which involved over a hundred people, integrating traditional Indian dance, contemporary dance, yoga practitioners and community members who were choreographed and trained for the dance performance event. The 2004 exhibition, ‘The Danced Space’ at the Light Square Gallery showed work leading up to and resulting from this performance and included works on paper, set and costume drawings, props, a film of the event and a live performance.

More recently, Meredith designed the set for contemporary dance piece, ‘Carpet Snake’, the set and costumes for the musical, ‘City of Angels’ and the set for Aiden Kane Munn’s ‘Meta Quantum Geek’, incorporating the painting of dynamic flowing scripts and sculptured paper forms within a confined, panelled space. Her most recent works include the set design and implementation of two dance performances by Alison Currie/Solon Ulbrich’s, ‘The Main Event’, and the set for Leigh Warren’s dance-piece, ‘Road-kill’, which included designing aspects of lighting.

Meredith’s solo exhibition, ‘Sutra’ in 2009 at Adelaide Central Gallery (mixed media on handmade papers), explored the underlying energies in nature that unify the natural world as they resonate through our affinity with colour, form, texture, and mood. This Indian theme was further explored in the 2010 ‘Passages from India’ exhibition at Redpoles Gallery. Her most recent solo exhibition for SALA 2011, ‘Crossing the Waters’ looked at the Sanskrit term lila or ‘the divine play’, which is used to describe the often unpredictable, hidden energies or the unseen laws of nature that control, modulate and sustain our daily lives.

Meredith has just completed work on the ‘Moon Lantern Festival’, part of the 2011 OzAsia Festival, both constructing large signature lanterns from cane and paper and facilitating lantern-making workshops at primary schools for the moon lantern parade.

As an artist and set and costume designer, Meredith is interested in pursuing further avenues of expression, through design for live performance, festival and community events, continuing to evolve and integrate this with her painting and works on paper.

Meredith is currently represented by Agora Gallery New York
www.art-mine.com/artistpage/meredith_russell.aspx