About - Artist Statement

Jeni Mulvey is an emerging artist born on Dharawal country, Sydney and maintains a connection to the waterways and bushlands of this land while living on Gadigal country in inner Sydney.  

Mulvey’s art practice invites a spatial and sensory exploration of materials and questions what constitutes contemporary painting. This artist’s process is as important an outcome as the final work, with making, unmaking and remaking all contributing to the investigation of ideas and materials that become apparent in the final works, or series of iterative works, throughout the process.  Mulvey seeks out the process whereby we can tap into our thinking and feeling beyond the paradigms we inherited.  

At times, works reach for a meditative affect or a sensory experience, for example Mulvey’s works that use repetitive painted text (Who Is Listening? 2021 and Love is Not Concerned 2021).  With other works, Mulvey uses social engagement to create an active dialogue or relations. Two projects conducted by Mulvey involved participation by various student community cohorts at the National Art School (Coffee Cup Confessions 2019 and The Wall With All 2021).  With painting practice as subject, there is also an exploration of the canvas itself as medium as seen in recent works, Contemplation (2021) and Emerging (2022). 

Mulvey often uses transparent textiles or semi-opaque rice paper, layered or draped in swathes, that lend themselves to creating hidden or partially hidden places for the viewer to explore. The effect is one of ‘looking through’ or ‘looking between’ to something unfamiliar despite its material familiarity. The artist is interested in ‘veiling’ as a device for the iterative experience of time, a building of spatial depth and sometimes, as metaphor for protective separation or the inner-outer worlds. Working both on and off the wall in installation format, painting becomes object, becomes metaphor or imagined world. Found objects or everyday materials are employed to bring contrasting qualities to fine art materials.

Mulvey completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Painting, at the National Art School, Sydney (2021) graduating with the NAVA Ignition Prize for Professional Practice.  She has exhibited or collaborated in a number of group shows at Sydney galleries including co-curation of an exhibition at the Library Stairwell Gallery, National Art School and exhibitions at Articulate Art Space, Sydney in 2020 and 2021, and aMBUSH Gallery, Sydney in 2022. Her work is held in private collections in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Scotland.  She has secured a private commission for an installation due to be completed in 2022.