Image: Jemima Wyman, Plume, 2021. Digital hand-cut collage, 106.5x 142 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney.

Jemima Wyman’s solo exhibition Fume, features plumes of smoke from flares, fires or deterrents present during protests. Fume expands on the artist’s ongoing photo collage practice, where she accumulates images documenting global activism that are printed, hand-cut, and arranged. Her work continues to investigate the use of camouflage as a visual and psychological device related to power.

Featuring collages from the artist’s series Haze, Plume and Billow, the exhibition features smoke as nebulous landscapes (or smokescapes). It mimics the abstract shapes found in camouflage textiles or, like signals of distress seen from afar, emanates from the ground up in an erratic array of differing shapes and colours. Elsewhere in the exhibition, smoke is the shadow and debris from conflict as seen up close. Ephemeral, and sometimes noxious, the particles caught in the air of these collages also contain rage.

In Fume, smoke is the siren: a signal of past, current and future distress.

Please note: the gallery is currently closed due to Covid-19 restrictions, click here to view the exhibition online.

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