Ellen Kwek (AUS)

‘Old Growth Fire’

Old Growth Fire was inspired by the film 'Tasmania's Forest Carbon' created by The Tree Project, an emotional trigger for Ellen Kwek. The scenes showing old growth forests burning were haunting and beautiful and sad. Smoke plumes in water paint colours and tree trunk remnants just glowing embers in the darkness. She recently visited the tallest tree in NSW, a Eucalyptus Grandis-'Flooded Gum' and felt at once conscious of my being much less significant and appreciative that this tree had been preserved so long. Kwek’s personal history also includes visits to her grandparents' tree farm in the Southern Highlands town of Robertson, climbing, pruning, chopping, and carving timber from trees. In reflection, Kwek feels it is a failing to lose the elders of our ecosystem.

Ellen Kwek is an architect in Victoria, Australia. Her work has been in the residential and commercial areas of design, and in product and installation design. Currently Kwek’s work is in Tasmania and Melbourne. She is interested art, textiles and making, it is a complimentary process to architecture.