Delia Vilhelm - Patterns of habitation

The basic theme of my work is the human imprint on the environment and our dynamic relationship with the landscape.
My work aims to explore how people use space in a modern urban context and the assumption of the permanence of our way of life and our cities. I am intrigued by the patterns we make on the surface of the earth and how we ‘own’ it, although our own existence is transitory.

The paintings and drawings in the series speak of place and memory and combine various elements of Australia, the place where I have arrived and now live, and Europe, the place I have journeyed from and once lived.

The work, like cities, is built up of many layers, ‘cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams’, only then to be scraped back, erased and destroyed. The process of building and dismantling is repeated until finally a sense of organic geometry reveals itself. A new structure is formed, but the traces of history remain as a result of the cranes, scaffolding and beams that lined, grazed and gouged the surface of the canvas.

Urban and suburban areas are full of ambiguous spaces, where the relationship between architecture and the environment is not one of obvious harmony, where the space feels unresolved or unsettling. I work with the urban environment as a landscape, to capture the morphology of the city and focus on the urban patterns of habitation.

‘Patterns of habitation’ is an amalgam of many elements, memories, signs, language, fears and desires, all floating somewhere in space and time, dream and reality. What is to be and what is yet to come. Assuming forms to only then disappear.
I utilized various mediums to conduct a social critique on our modern patterns of living expressed through the social consequences of urban design. My mining background and heritage determine my interest in the centuries old struggle between the forces of industry and nature.