bachelorettechangingopinionforevermore, Michelle Xen, 2008, single channel video installation (still image).
bachelorettechangingopinionforevermore is a single channel video installation developed during the completion of a Master of Arts in Research, QUT.
Led by choreographer Vanessa Mafe, with costumes developed by Paula Dunlop, the video features an improvised performance by Xen. The title of the work leads on from the score of the video composed by Xen using three songs layered and effected: Bachelorette, by Björk, Changing Opinion, by Philip Glass and Forevermore, by Moloko.
Billboard Communicative, Michelle Xen, QAGOMA Melville Haysom Scholarship.
Billboard Communicative is a large scale painting multimedia installation developed during the Melville Haysom Scholarship at QAGOMA.
Featuring two opposing large paintings of billboards, video is projection-mapped onto the work, setting up a dialogue between them. The commercial media found on billboards is stripped out leaving soft footage of rolling clouds.
Wings of a Rich Manoeuvre, Suzann Victor, National Museum of Singapore. Lighting and interactivity designed and manufactured by Lumen.Cloud.
Lumen.Cloud is an art, lighting, sound and installation collective led by Michelle Xen and designer Richard Candy. Working across disciplines, Lumen.Cloud have been commissioned to design and develop projects from lighting, interactivity, to installation, public art and festival events.
Featured project: Wings of a Rich Manoeuvre – by Singaporean artist Suzann Victor, presents a chorus of eight kinetic chandeliers that “sing” with movement as they sway in a dramatic mid-air choreography of light. Each chandelier is constructed and shaped from stainless steel and studded with a sparkling array of precision-cut Swarovski crystals accentuated by LED light designed by Lumen.Cloud. Together, the chandeliers create breathtaking aerial calligraphy as they morph from one hypnotic pattern to another, high above the bridge linking the National Museum’s original 19th-century colonial building with its modern futuristic glass wing.
Last Word, Robyn Backen and THE PLANK, 2012, Bundanon.
THE PLANK is a collaborative group created and led by artist Robyn Backen for the project Last Word developed for the Bundanon Trust. Michelle Xen composed site-specific sound work for the Last Word performance.
“Last Word 2012, a site-specific river performance, which developed research into acoustic and light transmission systems in remote environments.
The work embodied a river fugue of voices, and channelled memory in the form of a farmers diary from the region, written in the 1880’s. The dialogue focussed on the mundane daily weather report to explore the sense of time and necessary need to understand the climate. These voices transmitted then received beside, around and across the Shoalhaven tidal zone. It referenced the Boyd landscape legacy through the light and sound transmission, which illuminated and echoed upon the ghostly hillside, as a procession ascended and eventually disappeared into darkness.”
One Million Stars, installation designed by Michelle Xen and Richard Candy as Lumen.Cloud, 2018.
The One Million Stars installation is composed of over one million handwoven stars created by an international community, led by artist Maryann Talia Pau. to promote peace, light and hope in the world has been unveiled in the heart of Brisbane’s CBD in King George Square.
The installation is presented by Museum of Brisbane and the Queensland Government for Festival 2018 in King George Square, and was designed by Michelle Xen and Richard Candy – Lumen.Cloud.
“The One Million Stars public artwork is a fully immersive experience, inviting visitors inside a four-metre high, 15-metre wide dome created from 370 brightly coloured star garlands, forming a kaleidoscopic effect accompanied by a soundscape created by artist Michelle Xen.”
The Fields are a series of highly pigmented colour field painting developed during a Master of Arts in Research at Queensland University of Technology.
Slowground, Michelle Xen & Richard Candy, 2020, single channel video.
Slowground is a single channel video work commissioned by HOTA (Home of the Arts).
Michelle Xen collaborated with industrial and lighting designer Richard Candy to explore the site, isolation and phenomena during the lockdowns in Australia in 2020. Footage for the work was sourced via drone and composited using kaleidoscopic effects exploring light phenomena and other-worldly suggestions.
Gold Drum, Michelle Xen, 2012, single channel video work.
Gold Drum is a single channel video work commissioned by iAM Projects for Metricon Stadium.
Gold Drum is created in the fissure between contemporary music, performance and contemporary visual art practice. This work seeks to create a dynamic physical experience by generating sound and images as a reflection on the physical experience of performance.
TECTONIC DISCOMFORT is an temporary installation series in public spaces.
This series seeks to explore juxtapositions of text within familiar landscapes, questioning how text, when removed from commercial public space, can offer poetic resonance.
Both TECTONIC and DISCOMFORT refer to the exploration of tension in creative processes, and seek to name and explore these tensions as objects in space.
