Travel Rite: New works by Michelle Donald

Travel Rite – 2008

New works by Michelle Donald

Travel Rite explores the desire to travel and see the world.

In this latest body of work I have chosen to document/ritualise my own travel experiences with a series of mixed media works and installations.

While engaged in a journey of self discovery as we embark on an OE, we often remain an outsider, a voyeur, a tourist in each place we pass through.

Significant moments embedded in our psyche can change our outlook on life as a whole, but once the journey is complete, what are we left with? Maybe a tick list of countries, places and sites we have always dreamed of visiting. Perhaps a collection of memories represented by an assortment of memorabila, tickets, maps, brochures, and photos that are seldom looked at yet seemed so important at the time. Images that lose their reference to time and place, each siginificant moment blurring into each other.

We become hunters of the authentic experience, collectors of images that are other than our own daily existance. For the intrepid traveller there can be an awarness of our own luxury, wealth and waste, when faced with situations and ways of life that we find difficult to understand and often challenge preconceived romantic ideals of travel, exploration and tourism.

Included in the show is a piece called 'Overlay' which was exhibited in the latest Wallace Art Awards in Auckland, which was an exciting event to be a part of.

To view a small sample of some of the images please visit the Thistle Hall website www.thistlehall.org.nz/gallery.htm

Michelle Donald

ENDS

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