Angela Cavalieri explores the art of writing in visual form. In her large-scale, hand-printed linocuts, literary, religious and historical narratives eventually manifest as image. Sources include poetry, music, religious epitaphs and inscriptions on public buildings.
Fragments of experience and narrative find their form in Cavalieri’s enlarged, broken and repaired text. Seeing the text as an image, she re-writes that part of history by re-working and integrating the text into forms that reinforce its physical and material presence. The narrative is constantly changing and rediscovering itself and new narratives appear.
Whatever the source, Angela’s inspiration derives from her migrant family background, Italian being her first language. It is this intimate and personal connection that Angela uses to play with the ideas and architectures of language, storytelling and culture.
Recently she has been exploring ‘music as storytelling’, particularly in the use of ‘word painting’ from Monteverdi’s operas and the early poets who inspired his madrigals. CANZONE – Music as Storytelling, a combination of art and music, was exhibited at fortyfivedownstairs Gallery, Melbourne, in association with the 2015 Melbourne Festival, 29 September – 24 October 2015.
The exhibition was a culmination of Cavalieri’s five-year exploration of Monteverdi’s madrigals, developed during a recent residency at La Scuola Grafica Internationale in Venice, a Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and a previous commission from the Arts Centre Melbourne.
Angela Cavalieri studied at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia, from 1981-1983. She has since participated in numerous exhibitions. Most recently, in April/May 2015, Cavalieri was invited to La Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice for a residency and exhibition.
Angela Cavalieri’s Parole Viaggianti: Travelling Words, curated by Maroondah Art Gallery and LUMA| La Trobe University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2011 is her most recent touring survey exhibition. Angela has also participated in The Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion in the World Project, 2011.
Cavalieri has been awarded several prizes including the Manly Library Artist Book Award, New South Wales 2011; the Geelong Print Prize Acquisitive Award, Victoria, 2009 and the Silk Cut Print Award, Victoria, 2000. Her work is held in many public and private collections.