Rae Saheli

Rae Saheli is an artist living and working on Bundjalung Country, a longtime resident of Queensland’s Gold Coast. Rae completed an Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts at TAFE NSW (Murwillumbah), majoring in painting and printmaking in 2020, and is currently employed on campus as a Technical Assistant in the Visual Arts department.
No longer interested in the application of paint to render the world in expressive or colourful ways, Rae’s work is unique in that her primary mark making tool is a 12 gauge shot gun. Drawing on over twenty years’ experience as a target shooter her process favours chance and chaos, over any sense of pictorial order, and is executed in the safety of a gun club Her high velocity mark making takes aim at a range of substrates including canvas, aluminium and copper and seeks to reveal and elicit intense physical and emotional gestures. These gestures are then translated into two and three-dimensional forms.
Rae’s work has been featured on ABC ‘What’s Your Story’, and at SWELL Sculpture Festival, Industrial SWELL, Metro Arts, Gallery Downtown annexe of Tweed Regional Art Gallery, Northern Rivers Community Gallery, Brunswick Street Gallery, Woolloongabba Art Gallery, and The Walls Art Space. Rae has undertaken Artist in Residence programs at Placemakers (2023) and The Walls Art Space