Emma Fielden makes artworks to explore ideas spanning the infinite and the infinitesimal, the largest astronomical structures and the smallest constituents of matter, the unseen forces of the universe and our place in it.
Initially trained in the discipline of classical music, then jewellery and hand engraving, Emma’s background instilled in her a fixation on minute details and repetitive processes, traits that remain constant for Emma in her multidisciplinary visual arts practice today.
Emma exhibits regularly in Australia in solo and group exhibitions. She has been a finalist in prizes including in the NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship at Artspace Sydney (2017), the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2017) and the Blake Prize (2016). She has received awards and grants including the Paramor Prize Mayoral Award (2017), the National Contemporary Jewellery Award (2014), an Australia Council New Work Grant (2013) and a NAVA NSW Artists Grant (2017). In 2016, Emma was an artist in residence at Penrith Regional Gallery for the Gravity (and Wonder) program, where she worked together with astronomer Dr Andrew O’Brien of Western Sydney University, the outcome of which was the installation Distant Orbits.
Fielden’s work has been reviewed and featured in ArtAsiaPacific, Art Guide Australia, Object (Australian Design Centre), Australian Art Review, among others. She has been a guest on the ABC’s Books and Arts radio program and was recently interviewed for an upcoming short documentary on the topic of infinity including renowned physicist Dr Brian Greene. In 2017 she was a speaker at the Powerhouse Museum's ‘Art + Science CONNECT’ event for the Sydney Science Festival.
Emma is currently undertaking her third year as an artist in residence at Parramatta Artists Studios. She has recently been awarded the Art Omi Australia Committee Fellowship, under which she will travel to New York in June 2018 to take part in the Art Omi Artists Residency. Her next solo exhibition will be held at Dominik Mersch Gallery in November 2018.
CURRENT + UPCOMING:
Condo, Mexico City, Dominik Mersch Gallery, April 18
Aurora Australis, Galerie Noël Guyomarc'h, Montreal (curated by Katie Scott, Gallery Funaki), June 18.
Solo exhibition, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Nov 18
Image: Emma Fielden in her studio at Parramatta Artist Studios, 2018. Courtesy Parramatta Artists Studio. Photo: Jacquie Manning.