Statement
The first warm day of the season, Shenade took to the coast camera, hubby and dog in hand to seek simple pleasure in the dreamy beach scenes and soak in its gooey nature of time. So much activity, so much community, so much simple love for nature and just being. This is what life should be about, and it’s all part of being Western Australian.
Artist Bio
Shenade Unicomb is a Perth-born photographer and digital photomontage artist who captures suburban, urban and natural landscapes, from home and beyond, and then transforms them into virtual realities.
Shenade adores the process of creation, carefully freestyling each alteration to abstract and elevate the core—usually ordinary and commonplace—image. Layering and blending; flipping and mirroring; warping colours and light; adding geometric patterns and shapes—all help create her unique style.
As fragments of one image cross the path of another, new micro and macro worlds come into play that didn't exist before. Shenade is a digital landscape designer.
She wants the observer to pause and wonder what’s actually happening, to be confused about what’s real and what’s not.
She is energised when new patterns, lines, shapes, colours, spaces, possibilities and feelings emerge.
Dada, surrealism, dreams, meditation, quantum physics and transcendental experiences are influences.
Shenade adds somewhat-hidden gems and makes the elements off-kilter, causing the observer (people) to linger longer (time) whilst looking at her landscapes (space).
People + time + space = narrative.
A self-declared ‘house creep’, Shenade created Suburban Exposure in 2014, a documentary hobby site for her meandering and obsessing about where/how people live.
She loves nature; every surface of her Northbridge apartment has a plant on it.
Shenade works in social media marketing for the Western Australian Museum, and has also worked in local government, publishing, advertising, travel and tourism. Her vocational experience vastly influences her art today.
Experience: Foto Freo (2008); Arterial Collective Showbag, Little Creatures (2009); Finalist, City of Stirling Art Awards (2019); Winner, Beaufort Street Network Art Prize (2019); Collective, Perth Centre for Photography (PCP – 2016 and 2019); Finalist York Botanic Art Prize (2020).