MULTI-MEDIA musician and artist Iris Michelet moved to Broken Hill back in November, after a spontaneous trip that saw her work at the Palace Hotel in exchange for a room.
“I came here two years ago for the first time,” she said.
“To Australia from France, having lived my whole life in France, but I’m half Australian, so I just came with my mother because we were visiting family for three weeks.”
Michelet decided to stay on and travel throughout regional New South Wales and Victoria.
“I came to Broken Hill because I like the name of the town and thought I could make a song; it sounds like a song name,” she said.
She worked at a farm in Warren, near Dubbo, looking after the quarters for the jackaroos, before coming to Broken Hill, where she met local artist Megan Gilbert at the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum, who introduced her to the local art scene.
“It’s only since then that I’m really discovering the art scene,” she said.
“Especially now I’m more established here.”
She decided to move to Broken Hill and now makes art from her apartment and studio space in South Broken Hill, as well as taking on occasional freelance and short-term work, recently translating French films.
Michelet said she struggles to define her arts practice as it is multi-faceted and ever evolving, and she uses many mediums to express herself creatively.
“It’s always been the sense of it feeling good and being necessary, it’s my way of expressing myself I guess,” she said.
“So making things, like photography, music and drawing are all a part of that, it’s like printing my mind, I need to project these things externally so I don’t go mad.”
Michelet said she asked for a piano at an early age and also learnt guitar, though was never a technical artist or musician but used the instruments to externalise her feelings as she learned to understand the world around her.
“It kind of comes from a need to explain the world to myself, as I didn’t understand it for a while,” she said.
Michelet said that she hopes to exhibit her photography in Broken Hill, though has not exhibited before.
“I’m new to bringing my art outside of my house,” she said.
“But I want to because it’s a nice way of sharing.”
