Michelle Molinari Artist: 2013 Graduate Exhibition VCA

Artist Statement

Michelle Molinari is a painter, printmaker and taxidermy artist. Her work thematically addresses both the concepts of death and animal beauty through the physical nature of the taxidermic medium and depicted subject matter of her painted works. Molinari’s work seeks to investigate the cultures of longing that impel the urge to preserve something from nature’s inevitable course.

Drawing upon the histories of taxidermic representation and the European still life tradition, Molinari often creates her own taxidermy which generates the inspiration for her still life arrangements. Working from life observation her paintings highlight a beauty and sentimentality that is implicit of the artists own gestural motivations for preserving and memorialising the death of these specimens.

“The process and understanding of taxidermy itself is vital to the developmental process of my work, not only does the act of creating the taxidermy enable me to acquire an internal and empathetic understanding of the animal, it is also just as revealing of the human sentiment to hold something away from death as well as reveal it.”

Michelle Molinari's work is represented by Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne.

www.flg.com.au