Zelga successfully transitioned from University of Oxford’s Said Business School to gain an MFA in Fine Art at Wimbledon College of Art (UAL) and Oxford Brookes University – entering the Art world as an insightful outsider.

Zelga’s work explores our search for a safe space, the need for transition and the need for containment when dealing with emotion. Surreal composites seek to ask questions of memory, loss of control and hope as a means of survival using subject, line, trace and materiality.  Drawings are presented in myriad forms; through decals on glass, within interactive scrolls, on life-size vinyl’s, wall friezes and latterly through the moving-image. Zelga takes pastel, charcoal, sand, ink and moving image technology and moves the viewer through a range of scenarios in an attempt to document the human condition.

Works combine a narrative rich with emotion where boundaries are represented, confines evoked and a sense of life in suspension alluded to. Solitary figures often prevail suspended yet awaiting transition: ephemeral, transitory, present in body yet absent of emotion.

Figures speak through the confines of such borders and edges, often succumbing to the habitual safety of repetition and it is within the boundary of Line and Trace that both the artist and the viewer search for the truth. By repeating an action, over and over, the muscles become weak and tired, the hand metaphorically starts to slip and errors creep in. It is within these so called ‘errors’ that we find the ‘human’; that is the human imperfection.  In this digital age of perfect rendering, is it in fact imperfection that we can relate to, that we perhaps seek – are we all seeking transition away from the broken, towards the constant compulsion to be perfect, and the inevitable impossibility of the task? Such questions of the mind, humanity and our response to society surface throughout the work.

References include found images from the world of Art, Fashion and Design having spent a childhood within this community there seems a natural affinity with such sources. The physical boundaries of these references are seized and work undertaken to reposition, de-face and transform, anchoring and suspending them in equal measure with the weight of experience and emotion.

A constantly evolving lexicon of characters is created which when combined allude to a narrative of solitude and personal reflection. The intention is to create a dialogue, pose a question – to have the conversation.

Whatever the subject or medium each image and each stroke is individual yet the sum is far greater than its component parts. Whether in colour or monochrome, images convey an assemblage of meaning beyond the simplicity of the scene.