Michelle Day is motivated by a strong interest in science and biology. Her making is driven by the sensuality of organic forms and the psychology of using incongruous materials. Michelle works predominantly with fabric, silicone, steel, glass, found objects and light. She dissects mechanical objects and reconstructs them to be paired with organic inventions in an attempt to establish a kind of harmonic construction.

Michelle is strongly influenced by medical imagery, the evolution and application of science and technology and the growth and structure of organic forms. Elements of her work also mimic the aesthetics of the miniature world of insects and microbes. Her work is amusing, mysterious and disconcerting. She combines organic and mechanical elements to create a surreal hybrid of new technology and old medical and broad biological references. The soft, fleshy silicone combined with clinical mechanical elements causes an uncertainty that alludes to the incision of flesh or the implantation of biological technologies. The use of silicone as a kind of skin is repellent and sensuous to the touch and reminds us that our own skin is a container for our physical selves.

Michelle’s work contains a kind of simultaneous comfort and anxiety. The illuminated display cabinets give us the sense that we are looking at specimens, potential creatures of the future, new species created for unknown purposes or remnants from an ancient past. However, the glow from the cabinets is not sterile or forensic as in a place of science or medicine; there is something more reassuring and attractive about it as it draws the viewer in.

Michelle has gained a growing reputation in Australia since graduating from the Australian National University, with Honours, in 2009. She has exhibited nationally in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney and internationally in Chiang Mai in Thailand and Dunedin in New Zealand. Michelle was selected to create a large installation at the Canberra Museum and Gallery in 2010. In January 2013, Michelle was artist-in-residence at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Chiang Mai University. Her work has also been acquired for significant private collections and she is also a recipient of grants from Arts ACT and The Australia Council for the Arts.

Image: © Michelle Day, Catherine Asquith Gallery