Elisabeth Weissensteiner has made a number of places her home. From Europe and home in Vienna, to living in the United States and now Melbourne. New cultures have consistently kept Elisabeth’s creative channels open inspiring new direction in her finely conceived work.

Weissensteiner’s first solo show in Melbourne will be at the Chapman and Bailey’s gallery from 6 April – 1May. It will be the first sculpture exhibition at the gallery and coincides with an exhibition she will be having in Vienna.

Her fine organic looking works, Bud, Hairy Egg, Husk and Spiked Egg are suspended within the boundaries of the natural and contrived world. Working in flax, wool, wire shellac and pins, her objects are both artificial and natural, hybrid forms that are gestated and manufactured. They possess all the grace of a finely meshed see pod, with the toughness that a plastic coated membrane can prove.

As Elisabeth questions “where am I in this world not made by man and still not conceivable without him?” her works revel in exploration the potential of creating equally fine, breathing organisms from handmade paper and flax, as well as the modern manufactured materials of convenience, piercing their skins and hardening the forms.

Weissensteiner has succeeded in her desire to juxtapose the natural with the unnatural and the results are quite simply poetic.

Read article www.sculpture.org, April 2005 web edition of Scuplture magazine