Vera Möller - sea.liquid.sensation.flux.space

3 June - 3 September 2023
MPRG local focus

Living in Flinders for nearly a decade Möller has produced work in response to the marine life of Westernport Bay, Port Phillip Bay and the Bass Strait Coast. These bodies of water form part of the Great Southern Reef, an extraordinarily bio-diverse marine environment of enormous proportions.

This show will bring together new small and large scale works. It will include an array of diverse materials ranging from drawings and watercolours to collages, objects, and paintings. It will also feature a selection of works from Möller’s studio collection.

Vera Möller is a cross-disciplinary visual artist living on the lands of the Boon Wurrung / Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation in Australia. Her artwork engages in ecological issues arising from living in the Anthropocene and considers the persistence of life forms, species mutation, terrain and marine habitat. Drawing on the biological, visual, and spatial phenomena found in natural environments Möller’s practice acts as a form of speculative biological hybridity.

She utilises close observation, new scientific research, and somatic material exploration, to devise multi-layered immersive installations that invite reflection on the impact of humankind on ecosystems.

“I am captivated by the idea of some slippage between those life forms that actually exist in our natural environments and entirely fictitious organisms.” – Vera Möller

Often working in response to a specific site, in the last two decades Möller’s creative projects have ranged from: an investigation into the undergrowth of the Kings Wood in Kent, UK; a botanical exploration of the sub-alpine heath lands of Skullbone Plains, Tasmania; wetlands in Goulburn Valley, Victoria; the Great Barrier Reef in the Northern climates of Australia; cold water marine environments of the Victorian coast; as well as the vast underwater environment of the Great Southern Reef.

She has exhibited widely both internationally and in Australia. Möller’s work is held in private collections in Australia, China, Japan, UK, USA and Germany, along with the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Australian National Museum, Canberra; Monash University Collection, Melbourne; Latrobe University Collection, Melbourne; Victoria University, Melbourne. 

Image credit: Vera Möller, soliroso (detail) 2017, oil on linen. Courtesy of the artist