Pop-up showcase at upstairs HEART art space

A pop up exhibition of artworks by Margaret River artist Elisa Markes-Young has landed at the Margaret River HEART, promising to invoke emotions and memories through a selection of her beautiful works.

On display will be a selection of works from Elisa’s ‘Memory of a Memory’ (2018/2022), a larger installation consisting of multiple storylines, the starting points of which were the artist’s childhood photographs. Each slightly different from its predecessor, images allude to the fragility, inaccuracy and changeability of our memories.

Additionally, ‘Shades of Loss’ (2022) – Elisa’s entry to last year’s Joondalup Invitational Art Prize – will be shown. The triptych talks about the pain of things lost forever, communicating the feeling of a bitter-sweet melancholy, regret and yearning for something or someone that once was.

Elisa was born in Gorlice, Poland. In 1981 she moved to Germany with her family and moved to WA in 2022. With her cross-cultural biography, Elisa Markes-Young’s identity is punctuated by the question of how Polish or German she really is.

“It is also very much defined by the feeling of being caught between two worlds. The excitement of living in a foreign country is accompanied by an intense feeling of displacement. Being a stranger and ‘different’, having to master another language and the mentality of a new place creates a feeling of insignificance and inadequacy.”

Trying to navigate between the Polish origins, German influences and Australian surroundings, Elisa recognises that self-reflection is crucial to her identity: It is a reflection on the variations of her ‘handed-down’ identity.

Memory of a Memory/Shades of Loss will run at the Margaret River HEART Gallery until October 10, Monday to Friday, 10am-4pm.