Sarah Bellisario – Artist Creatrix

Ask the Goddess – Shooting Gallery 2023

‘Ask the Goddess‘ invited the public visiting the gallery to connect with the artwork by making a wish and leaving a votive offering. The work aimed to explore how a diverse audience might interact with the shrine in a meaningful and personal way. Asking, “Can symbolic and engaged audience participation facilitate healing or emotional release?”.

Instructions and artwork introduction for the gallery audience  – 

Ask the Goddess invites you to interactively engage with Goddesses for our modern age. What is it you really want or need in your life? Mentally, physically, emotionally or materially?

1. Write down what you need in your life on the post-it notes provided.
2. Take a nail from the bowl as your offering to the Goddess and fold it in with your post-it note request.
3. Hold it for a second and imagine.
4. Drop it on the sheet in front of the Goddess you feel most drawn too

The Shrine

Over the two weeks of the show 580 votive offerings were made to the Goddesses.

Votive post-it’s and nails will be fired into a new large ceramic art work. Allowing the individual and personal votives to be offered up in fire to the particular Goddess they were intended for, and with the hope of imbuing the new work with the energy and wishes of the audience.

Examples of audience wishes –