Jessica Ledwich holds a Master’s in Fine Art from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in Mexico City, Hong Kong, London, and Lisbon. She was recently published in Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art.

Using photography and collage she explores how the image is employed by capitalism as a tool to create desire. By delving into the strange, shiny world of synthetic objects, her work seeks out the space where weirdness and consumerism collide. Inspired by the hyperreal aesthetics of advertising, German food, and the accidental poetry of found postcards, her images create a tension between seduction and absurdity.

During her residency, Ledwich has been trawling discount stores, markets, and second-hand shops for curious objects that speak to mass-produced desire. Using these finds—alongside flowers, food, and postcards—she constructs still life scenes and collages that reveal the slippages between authenticity and artifice. Her use of vibrant colour, deliberate excess, and re-photographed materials reflects a fascination with the seductive strategies of commercial media and the glossy illusion of capitalism. The resulting images sit somewhere between sincerity and satire, inviting viewers to question their own entanglement with consumer fantasies. In this space, glamour becomes distorted, and the banal takes on an uncanny glow.