Artwork: Split 2022
Artist: Shanti Shea An
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 120 x 140cm
Acquisition: An acquisition of the ACT Legislative Assembly Art Advisory Committee, 2025
Asset no: OLA002994
About the Work
This work, from the artist’s Painted Double series, addresses a duality through the formal qualities of mirroring, symmetry, and folding. Split shows an image as if seen in an open book, with the fold interrupting the actual image. Although painted in a realist style, Shea An maintains an ambiguity with the disrupted scene reminding the viewer that an image has been constructed. The ‘folded book’ is also the artist’s way to find a resolution between text and image as modes of communication.
About the Artist
Shea An has had a long association with the ACT through studies at the ANU, teaching at the SOAD and exhibiting in several Canberra galleries such as Tributary Projects, The Front, CCAS and ANCA. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts (First Class Honours) 2016 from the ANU School of Art & Design, and in 2019 graduated with a Master of Art History and Curatorial Studies (Advanced), with a thesis on architectural and pictorial thresholds in seventeenth-century Dutch painting. In 2024 she graduated PhD, and Painted Double was her exhibition work. She has held solo exhibitions nationally and has participated in group exhibitions in Australia, China and France.