A 10-DAY hiking trip in the remote Faroe Islands was the inspiration for Melissa Clements’ latest exhibition Saeculum.
One of Australia’s most exciting young artists, Clements has already been a finalist in major prizes like the Archibald and the Lester, impressing judges with her dramatic oil paintings that fuse classical mythology with contemporary life.
Perhaps searching for a new muse, she travelled to the Faroe Islands, a North Atlantic archipelago full of cliffs, fog and angry seas.
• Some of the paintings by Melissa Clements in Saeculum.
“I’ve spent time in Iceland and Svalbard before, but the Faroes are different – they erupt out of the ocean and fall away just as quickly,” Clements says.
“With many of the 18 islands only a few kilometres wide, you’re never far from the sea; on a hike, as soon as the ocean disappears on one side, it reappears on the other.
“That constant shifting perspective really informed the work – the sense of extremes, contrast, and the endurance of the human spirit. It also shaped the aesthetic mood: fragmented peaks, mist-heavy atmospheres, and cool blues, purples and greens in my palette.”
Photographed by Lucida Studio
The end result was 19 stunning oil paintings that embody saeculum—Latin for “the span of a human life.”
With dramatic, rocky green hills framing animals and sombre faces, the paintings are a bit like Wuthering Heights put through a neo-classical blender.
There’s a semi-nude man collapsed on a rock, a woman clutching a badger, and lots of moths surrounded by hills and swathes of orange.
Clements says the exhibition reimagines the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods, as a symbol of human ambition and risk.
“The moth is a natural version of the Promethean myth,” she says. “We are often drawn to the things we want most, even when they come with danger.
“Saeculum celebrates the human tendency for curiosity and spontaneity, while also warning against pushing those impulses too far toward power, greed, or control.”
Flames appear throughout the paintings, alongside the Southern Moon Moths, a species native to WA.
Dramatic
Clements grew up in Perth and says it has shaped her approach to art and life.
“Western Australian artists get our strength from isolation and landscape rather than urban energy,” she says.
“This quietness helps us focus on what it means to be emotional, imperfect and real as human beings.
“At a time when Artificial Intelligence is changing creative work, I think it’s more important than ever to celebrate human skill.
“The exhibition is a celebration of classical painting and human storytelling.
“Work grounded in lived experience, developed over months, and created through slow, meticulous practice.”
Saeculum is at Linton & Kay Galleries in Subiaco from April 29-May 18. For more info see melissaclementsartist.com.
by STEPHEN POLLOCK