Do you still love me? (asked the earth)

Spill Projects (formerly Silver Leaf Art Box) is excited to present a solo exhibition of new works on paper and a small-scale diorama by Mornington Peninsula-based artist Rosie Weiss. The exhibition will coincide with Rosie Weiss - Collected Works, showing at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, highlighting a suite of recently acquired works that provide an overview of the artist’s practice from 1979 - 2018.

The depiction of plant remnants has been central to the artist’s practice for many years, and two distinct series come together in the current project, both created during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020. Weiss states, “The works from this time have an almost playful thread for me, the fire plants are there, but there are also other images appearing. A seahorse my father left me, an image of an unfurling fern I took thirty years ago, and the repeated forms of ever spreading couch grass. Images close to home, with a concentrated focus, but also an experimental freedom.”

Weiss visited the east Gippsland fire grounds in early 2020 and collected charred plant fragments that recur throughout this body of work. Do you still love me? (asked the earth), a poignant question the artist poses in a poem about the work of the same title, encapsulating the essence of this exhibition and cutting to the heart of her relationship with the earth.

Created after the death of Weiss’s father during lockdown in 2020, a series of twenty four smaller works titled Breath fracture delves into notions of mortality, loss and renewal. Plant fragments float and glide in visceral internal spaces, drawing connections between the physical structures of plants and those of the body. Weiss’s use of pigments and metallic inks creates a luscious iridescence that is mysterious and mercurial.

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