Sandra Selig appreciates the familiar & ordinary in the everyday

Mon 15 Sep 2025

Sandra Selig’s interest ‘in science and astrophysics’, and in ‘the elements of space and being that can be felt but not seen’ inspire her work. For Selig, appreciating the extraordinary in the everyday is important:

'Something so familiar and ordinary can be completely expanded in your mind, to connect to something seemingly unrelated. I think it’s vital for people to feel like they can stop and absorb and think about something and maybe then drift back to it.'

mid-air 2003

Rather than simply inserting an object into a space, Selig creates an atmosphere or energy, a tension between something virtual and an actual form. In mid-air 2003, Selig uses delicate but strong nylon thread beaded with Styrofoam balls to construct tubes that meet at right angles and seem to shift for the viewer as they move beneath the work.

Watch | Sandra Selig's beaded thread appear to float in mid air

mid-air comprises differently sized Styrofoam balls beaded intermittently on lengths of clear nylon thread, at certain points, and according to lighting, the balls appear to float in mid air. Two sets of the beaded thread, arranged in tubular compositions span both the length and the breadth of the space, bisecting at approximate right angles. The threads create a fine film of colourless texture where the appearance of the work alters as the viewer weaves through it.

Just as the shifting lines of the work encourage the viewer to become immersed in it, the work also embodies the viewer's presence. Surrounded by white beads and delicate threads, you become acutely aware of the slightest movements in the air and the changing of the light.

In the artist’s installations volume and form of space, air and light are evoked by delicate materials, and the ways in which these capture aspects of their surrounds, such as depth. Selig has stated:

'… I've always been interested in shapes and the formlessness of form. These thread pieces are an attempt to sketch an object in an architectural space that perhaps removes weight or which, momentarily, forgets its density of form.’

Selig has a musical background, and some of her early works explore the physicality of sound, filling interior spaces with specially edited recordings. Like the vibrations emitted from musical instruments, mid-air hovers in the gallery space, inviting us to experience the formlessness of form.

Watch | Sandra Selig discusses her works in 'Wonderstruck'

Webs from my garden

'Webs from my garden' is a series of works on paper featuring spider webs captured by Selig, the artist likens these webs to a larger ‘web of life’ that can be found in the universe or the cells inside our bodies.

Both fragile and resilient, each strand is finer than a human hair but stronger, kilogram for kilogram, than steel. Despite their relative strength, these delicate threads are often transitory, being broken and remade time and again. Here, Selig has captured a series of webs reflecting moments in time, collected from her garden, they have been sprayed with enamel and adhesive before being transferred to paper to preserve their form.

The artist’s works have a way of slowing us down and making us look more closely, as she does when in her garden and elsewhere, appreciating what’s around her. Selig adds that she spends...

‘a lot of time in my garden... just looking and observing how creatures build things, and I became really fascinated by these spiderwebs’, [which she likens to] ‘drawings I could never make with my own hands’.

Like the large thread installations that Selig constructs, these tiny arachnid installations plot points across a void and systematically connect them with fibre.

View Sandra Selig’s mid air 2003 and 'Webs from my garden' 2004-05 in 'Wonderstruck' at the Gallery of Modern Art until 6 October 2025 or delve into the captivating works on display with our weekly highlights.

Wonderstruck
28 June – 6 October 2025
Gallery of Modern Art
Gallery 1.1 (The Fairfax Gallery), Gallery 1.2 & Gallery 1.3 (Eric and Marion Taylor Gallery)
Brisbane, Australia
Free entry