Exhibition dates: Wed 14 July - Sun 25 July, 2021

Space 1
Mara Braun

“Mara Braun (she/her) is a Naarm (Melbourne) based artist. She is a recent graduate of a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts) with distinction at RMIT University. Her practice emerges in response to her situation and the agency of the materials that prevent themselves for the project at hand. This mode of practice encompasses a range of mediums including painting, photography, textiles, etc; choosing the most appropriate medium for the project at hand. Braun is most concerned with questions surrounding the Liminal space, Phenomenology, and New Materiality, which she explores in her work. The 2020 lockdown period was a time of intense alienation and isolation. For weeks on end, the only people I saw were strangers to me. Trapped in a solitary cage surrounded by a concrete jungle inhabited by unknown souls. My nostalgia for moments of connection, found me imagining the lives that were lived within the houses I passed on my daily walks. The 'Stranger Worlds’ Series depicts a liminal space existing between the domestic and urban landscape. The subject matter was created by projecting onto the urban site, photographs looking into anonymous domestic spaces. Each image subsists as its own surreal world in which any claim can be made as to its’ history. The abstracted images include both recognisable and confusing elements, creating an uncanny plane which the viewer peers into.’ Mara Braun would like to acknowledge that the land on which she practices are the traditional lands for the Wurundjeri people, and that she respects their spiritual relationship with their country. She would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Boon Wurrung language groups as the custodians of the region and recognise that their culture and heritage is still important then, now and forever. She would like to pay her respects to Elders past, present and emerging. I would like to acknowledge that I conduct this business on unceded lands and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging.

Space 2
Liza Poser

My garden is a sanctuary. A peaceful cove that nourishes and quiets the soul. The smell of sweet roses rules most of the time.Their lingering scents conquering all other smells. Amongst the roses you can smell soft tones of lavender, Jasmine and herbs that are waiting anxiously to be picked. My garden a place to escape, to sit and let the surroundings calm and relax from the busyness of everyday life.

Group Show
Oprah has an Art Degree

Exhibition dates: 30 June - 11 July, 2021

Creativity, attention to detail, emotional intelligence - are the qualities of the sum of us Arts Degree graduates.

This exhibition is to fight back against the misconception that Arts Degrees don’t have the right in-demand job skills determined by a conservative government in a financial crisis. An arts student's contribution to their degree is now higher than someone doing medicine. Education Minister Dan Tehan told the National Press Club that the Government was unashamedly trying to steer students away from humanities and the arts.
This is despite himself having obtained an Arts Degree!

This exhibition will highlight the broad contribution that the arts have made that is more than the money we make and the goods and services we produce. It is about the conversations we help start and the way in which we interact with the wider world.
Works to be made fall under one or more of the following areas:

Music / Drama / Cinema
International Studies
Archaeology
Communication
Cultural, Ethnic, & Gender
Language and Literature
History
Law
Philosophy
Religion
Anthropology
Geography
Political
Sociology
Urban studies

The contribution of these disciplines has been overlooked in discussions of economic and commercial value. These are fundamentally issues of human behaviour and social interaction.
We are critical arts thinkers’ that form multidisciplinary teams that understand human behaviour and can connect with people. In particular, our ability for succinct visual communication, that may tackle unfamiliar problems, combined with the ability for critical analysis, we are individuals that assess risks and give owing consideration to ethical issues.

Arts graduates play an important role towards the future and we ARE part of the solution!

Artists:
Kelly Sullivan
Olga Tsara
Polly Hollyoak
Maz Dixon
Andrea Sinclair
That Dead Artitst
Andrea Hughes
Empire Of Stuff
Nick Heynsbergh
Benjamin Coombs
Nicole O’Loughlin

Drum For Freedom
Thinn Thinn

Exhibition dates: 16 - 27 June 2021

This is not just an art exhibition but also a protest against the military coup in Myanmar by the Tatmadaw - Myanmar's Military. The coup in Myanmar began on the morning of 1st February 2021, when democratically elected members of the country were deposed by the Tatmadaw. Since then, there has been nothing but violence and abuse of human dignity while the world watched and occasionally wrote carefully worded letters.

Meanwhile, the people of Myanmar have protested the Military tirelessly and creatively despite the Military's strong-arm suppression techniques. Among the most popular forms of protest is the banging of pots and pans, which is a traditional practice of warding off evil.

This exhibition is a protest. The work created is an artistic equivalence of the banging of pots; "Drum for Freedom". The artists stand in solidarity with the Myanmar people, and all profits will be given to Myanmar's Civil Disobedience Movement.

In addition to the leading artist, the show will also feature some works by Nyein Chan Aung, the artist of the 2019 launch Melbourne Art Tram, "The Late Supper.

Link interview with SBS Burmese

https://www.sbs.com.au/.../drum-for-freedom-exhibition...

Exhibition dates: Wed 19 May - Sun 30 May, 2021

Space 1
Betty Nicholson

My exhibition Still Distinguishing Between Night And Day was developed through 2020-21. My method to develop a painting is to use the canvas to work through my reflections about the complexities of life as I am experiencing at that time. I begin by applying and wiping away paint on the canvas until an image emerges that resonates within me. Memories and dreams that arise from the subconscious are an integral part of the process.Figures and forms appear in a narrative that emerges from the canvas. Time is required to know them.
It is a slow process that is challenging and requires reflection and many changes. For me, my paintings are a mirror for contemplation, where doors are constantly opening.

When All The Words Fall Into The Sea is a work about words, remembered as fragments, disappearing into eternity.

Space 2
Tommy Bawden

Visual Jazz is a collection of works created between 2020 and 2021. Through bold, fluid and powerful strokes of paint I am replicating the improvisation of a jazz musician.

The sheer creativity it takes to keep an audience engaged while making a melody on the spot is extremely poetic,
I strive to achieve that through my paintings that have a constant chime attached to them.

Exhibition dates: Wed 5 May - Sun 16 May, 2021

Solo Show
Dancing Backwards on Velour Velvet
Raisa McLean

Raisa is a multidisciplinary artist, interested in creating works that evoke a sense of wonder and confusion in her viewers. She works broadly across many mediums however predominantly uses video/photo, audio, clay, textiles, wire and found objects.
Currently her work surrounds the interactions of femininity with nature and the collide of sexism and feminism in the concept of "compulsory heterosexuality".

She explores her own lived experience of femme queerness and the unattainable seductress character in her highly journalistic practice. Raisa strives to create immersive and affective works that are accessible and meaningful to both a fine arts audience and the general public. Raisa's art practice began in high school, exhibiting in galleries since she was 15, she is now extending her practice at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne and her studio in Northcote.

Dancing with seduction and what it means to be a woman, Raisa Mclean’s second solo exhibition “dancing backwards on velour velvet” is tender and rough around the edges.
The works walk a fine line between earnestness and falseness, saturated in rosé and red wine - the final dregs of a night out, a pink fake nail left on the coffee table. As part of the main installation, dancers Chiharu Valentino, Ryu Bautista and Mara Galagher have been commissioned to perform in sculptural costumes on four days. The incorporation of dance into Raisa’s art practice has been long in the making, with much of her text-based works making references to dance and movement of the body. The exhibition will also contain a variety of ceramics, wire-based works and projected video works.

Exhibition dates: Wed 6 - Sun 17 Jan 2021

Space 1
Eddie Burger & Lulu Lala

EDDY BURGER
The antelope tree and other playful grotesqueries

Eddy’s drawings are typically humorous, surreal, weird. independent, unplanned spontaneous creations that stem from the unconscious as well as prompts and/or the intention to be weird and unusual, the naked outpourings of his warped yet fun-loving mind. They speak of his love for sci-fi, fantasy, animals, dinosaurs, weirdness, humour and storytelling via absurd scenarios, twisted caricatures and fantastical creatures.

Eddy is an anti-realist. He may reflect on real needs, actions and tension, but generally only obliquely, creating more a product of the internal world than reality. There are no true-to-life, everyday concerns represented here, folks. He does not engage with popular current issues. Common themes include animal liberation, human-animal hybrids, consensual monster sex, cats, joy, humour, grotesqueness, and anything else interesting.

LULU LALA
Pretty Ugly

These 7 masks explore the crossover between beauty and ugliness. For example, fragility is horrific and at the same time beautiful.
Each mask was created from a clay sculpt, and then rendered in paper mâché. The time consuming process of layering paper gave the masks a chance to speak to the maker and inform the next step of bringing out the character, with colour, texture, enhancement and embellishment. The emerging entity captured the delicate, divine, dazzling, and charming as well as the distorted, bizarre, the vile and
grotesque facets of each.

Lulu likes to make things and has made a huge array of things over 40 years for exhibitions, community performances, puppet shows, theatre shows and films.

Space 2
Group Show: Perspectives

ASHEG BROM
Haiku of the Tree Planter

Once upon a time
During an unwritten dawn
Lived an unsung star
She planted flora
That allured feathered fauna
Spreader of tranquil
Blurred by the rat race
Invisible in plain sight
Here she did her work
Her hands created
The land of the beautiful
With little reward
Time has forgotten
Her name, her hopes and her dreams
Yet we breathe her work
They live among us
The star’s copious children
They deserve your smile

SHELLEY HALL
Water Spirits

Often depicted as beautiful maidens or mermaids, water nymphs
(or naiads) are spiritual creatures that preside over rivers, streams and other bodies of fresh water. Referencing the local river and the female form, I have put together a series of work that celebrates this life force. Rivers move through the landscape, connecting us to both land and sea. They are often perceived as Edenic, a place of abundance and natural beauty. The water spirits are transparent and almost weightless. They merge with the flowing water, evoking both a sense of stillness and movement. Like the river itself,constant yet ever changing.

LEANNE BEGGS

Exploring with colour ,depth and texture , reinventing recycled materials and objects, converting the domestic and mundane into extraordinary fabulousness

MARY STONE

Found Objects. On the floor. Under footstools. Against shelves. Between books. In the gutter. Around the streets. Begging to be picked up.

I am Glue Girl. Epoxying the pox.

Exhibition dates: Wed 7 April - Sun 18 April, 2021

Space 1
No Power in the 'Verse Can Stop Me
Laura Herman

My main objective in this series of work is to capture the beauty of imperfection and chaos while providing the audience with a sense of wonder and imagination. I believe we experience art by allowing it to take us on a journey, so I paint to create visual adventures, encouraging people to engage with the work and form their individual interpretations of each piece. I aim to invoke a sense of emotion in the viewer, like we all might have while listening to music or reading poetry, and encapsulate the essence of everything being delicately interconnected.

I draw a lot of inspiration from things which fascinate me, such as the universe, nature and the seasons, how one comes to an end by decaying in one form for another to blossom, always evolving into something new. This inspires me to embrace the process of trial and error as I approach each piece without much of a plan of where it will go, allowing me to emphasise the diversity of the aesthetic senses.

With a combination of heavy brush strokes and soft, almost melodic, circular motions, my pieces come together with a controlled but dynamic expression of movement by blending the chaotic textures and gentle backgrounds, to create a perception of rhythm woven through the pieces portraying a visual verse.

Space 2
Group Show 'Alignment'

We all want to find balance and grounding in a world as turbulent as ours. ‘Alignment’ speaks of the emotions, revelations, journey, development, and experiences from the perspective of 6 young artists. You could say it tells their coming of age, it would likewise be a tale of their strife; but also how they look toward the future. Like how we hope the stars and universe aligns for a perfect revelation, encounter, moment; ‘Alignment’ hopes to capture and reflect upon that brief moment of time before, while, and after it happens.

Artists
Anya Wong
Celine Lee
Theresa Lee
Jessica Ting
Tina Tang
Elan Lee

Exhibition dates: Wed 17 March - Sun 28 March, 2021

Space 1
Things I Don’t Think About at 3 AM
Shellie Tonkin

Shellie Tonkin continues her study of the interior mechanics of the sub-conscious in ’Things I don’t think about at 3 AM’ a vivid and sometimes chaotic description of insomnia. While sleep has never been her superpower, her most recent battle with sleeplessness lasted an epic three years before vanishing as quickly as it came.

The subjects under scrutiny range from the global to the truly personal, from the catholic church’s innate contempt of women to the bleakness of grief; mirroring the randomness of thought when her sub-conscious was free to wander at will through thoughts and memories. Utilising vibrant colour and attention to detail, Tonkin has produced work that is painterly and dramatic, a nod to the old masters of art via the thoroughly modern medium of digital photography.

Space 2
Updownaround
Lindesay Dresdon

My artwork celebrates the infinite ways in which ideas and materials can be transformed into vibrant, expressive visual statements.

Line - Shape - Colour - Composition.

The interplay of improvised gestures, and the creation of surface textures are key elements in my painting, printmaking, mixed-media, and collage explorations.

Exhibition dates: Wed 6 - Sun 17 Jan 2021

Group Show
69 Collective

When early in 2020 The 69 Collective came up with ‘Awkward Hug’ as the title of their next exhibition, nobody had ever heard of
Covid 19, and Corona was either a beer or a car.

Covid 19 has made the title/theme more appropriate than we could have imagined. Awkward Hug awkward hug awkward hug - gee this is awkward - Awkward Hug is an exhibition by the 69 Collective at BlackCat Gallery - see Awkward Hug by members of The
69 Collective at BlackCat Gallery.

Exhibition dates: Thurs 18 - 28 Feb 2021

Solo Show
The Seven (Not so) Deadly Sins
Leesa Gray-Pitt

Can these sins really be so deadly? I think not! The concept for these artworks and exhibition was to take another look at these so called deadly sins from a new perspective. Lust, Pride, Gluttony, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Greed can all be amazing traits that feel wonderful without hurting anyone else. The Pride movement for the LGBTQI community is one of empowerment.

What’s so wrong with being a Sloth for a day or two (or more) lazing in bed recharging the batteries? And Envy - I’m envious of people who have never known the heartache of losing a child! I would never want them to know that despair but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to see my daughter get married and have children just like theirs. I know only too well how short this life can be so as long as we aren’t hurting anyone lets embrace these so called sins and make them very enjoyable vices!!

Exhibition dates: Wed 3 Feb - Sun 14 Feb 2021

Space 1
Shelley Hall

My current work is a continuation of an ongoing exploration of self and my connection to the natural world. Using a combination of oil painting, poetry and observation, this series touches on the dynamic and poetic relationship between femininity and renewal, both individually and with the environment.

The works are in response to a recent move from rural Victoria to inner city Melbourne where I have focused on the thriving aspects of nature existing within a populated city. A number of the works were also completed during the Covid lockdown, adding another layer of light, dark, death and rebirth.

Space 2
Rodford Belcher

A friend asked me recently how I went from being an animator to creating the sort of art I do now. Good question, I thought. I came out of a graphic design course, the days before computers, specialising in portraits and nudes. Soon afterward I saw for the first
time Canadian Film Board animated films. They really impressed me. They were beautiful, personal, surreal artwork, mainly coloured pencil and ink on paper and then animated.

And so my interest in animation began. I went to film school and really enjoyed creating surreal stories with pencil and ink artwork on paper and bringing them to life by animating them.

The next few years were exciting and fruitful. But when I started working for Animation Studios everything changed. No more did
I make my own films and artwork. We made mass produced crap for TV and I became disillusioned and exhausted. I decided to walk away. I have never regretted that decision.

At the same time I became interested in Dr Carl Jung
(the psychologist) and his work on dreams and the mandalas he produced on his own personal journey. I also read Joseph Campbell (the mythologist) who was heavily influenced by Jung. I saw how certain myths and symbols speak deeply to us from our inner selves.

I enjoyed drawing and painting mythic beings like griffins, angels, fallen angels, Pan and the Minotaur. I also started sculpting nature spirits, gargoyles, griffins and dragons out of clay.

When I walked away from animation I drove around Australia.
I needed time and space to find myself. I felt confused about my life and that I had failed somehow with my art. I also felt completely locked out of my true self and feelings.

One morning I stepped out of my tent in Northern Australia, grabbed a stick and started scratching patterns in the red dirt. I found great peace in doing this so every morning, with a sense of great expectation, I would leap up and draw some more. Eventually my whole tent was ringed by Mandala-like patterns. I realised the basic shapes I used, like circles, triangles, straight or wavy lines, squares, eyes, diamonds, spirals, etc were like a personal language to me.
A lot of these early drawings were washed away by the monsoonal rains so I started drawing them into a text book. Then I coloured them with Derwent’s and pastels. The colours I used combined with the shapes held great significance for me.

I didn’t want to show people my art. It was too personal. It was just for me. The text book became my first personal diary. I worked on it every day no matter where I was or what I was doing. I have beautiful memories of turning off the road in the middle of the WA desert, setting up a chair in the shade and drawing in my diary, finishing off with a cuppa. This also stopped me rushing through that awesome country and I started to feel the power of it. I would sit and take it in and listen to it. It spoke to some deep part of me.
I have never lost that connection I felt out there.

Since I was a boy I have been fascinated by cultures that believe that this world is just an illusion (Maya) and that there are vast, infinite hidden realms if you are sensitive and open enough to discover them. These realms are full of beautiful Spirits, Creation Beings and Guides as well as Dark Beings ready to lead you astray.
I felt these worlds strongly in northern Australia, in the deserts and vast long coasts and the huge forests of southern WA. I sensed the presence of the Spirits of land, sea, plants and animals. I felt they are there to guide us if we are open enough to listen to them.

At that time I started to dream of beautiful beings made up of amazing colourful energy. I try to capture what I see by using bright, pure colours in my art. I design the shape of my sculptures to show what these beings do and express rather than just how they look

Exhibition dates: Wed 20 Jan - Sun 31 Jan , 2021

Space 1
Decadence
Asha Sym and Jake Steele

Decadence: extravagance, luxury and self-indulgence with a sense of moral decline Here to challenge your idea of what sustainable fashion looks like.

A collaboration where photography, fashion and ethics are explored by Jake Steele and Asha Sym through couture. The natural environment is dramatic in landscape, colour, scale and originality which is reflected in the garments. As global warming becomes a bigger issue, we as people have to acknowledge how we are contributing to the acceleration of consumption of non renewable resources and the destruction of the natural world.
Typically nylon clothing takes 200 years to break down in landfill; meanwhile, few consider composting and reuse of the natural fibre garments. ‘Decadence’ explores the interplay between how people could contribute to the preservation and reparation of the natural environment in a time when it seems all we are doing is destroying it.

You will be made to ask yourself “what is value?” Is value finding pieces that you can keep forever; or is it finding the cheapest item you can? How is value created and measured? Can we start consuming fashion in a more responsible way where value for one person doesn’t mean at the detriment to the environment or to the people making our clothes?

Behind oil and gas, the fashion industry is the second biggest contributor to global pollution, how can we change these statistics?

Space 2
Reaching Place
Kate Matthews

Comfort is uncomfort, known is unknown.You're left without reference, you're left all alone.

Reaching Place presents my most recent exploration into the experiential aspects of public space. Old ways of seeing and being just do not apply to 2020. Moments of hesitation burst into frantic movement, then quiet stillness. My chemicals have failed these images, as well as my shutter.

As a Canberra based artist I pick apart our carefully planned places, commonly using photomontage to reflect mismatching identity. Please, play with your thoughts as I have played with these spaces.

Exhibition dates: Wed 6 - Sun 17 Jan 2021

Space 1
The face behind the face
Su Yang

My studio projects aim to investigate the ideologies that encourage many young Chinese women to undergo unnecessary even harmful non-therapeutic cosmetic surgeries to alter their appearance in order to conform to dominant standards of “female beauty ideals.” Cosmetic surgery has been a controversial topic among feminist debates. One group believes it is a way for women to transcend and/or transform female embodiment. However, I want to pose the question about the identity of the women who do not have any of their personal features after cosmetic surgeries and instead take on the same features as internet celebrities. These works present the visible impulse to these invisible ideologies that have begun to change women’s bodies. They are also conceived with the desensitized nature of cosmetic surgery and the subsequent traumas.

Support by City of Yarra

Space 2
Take A Warm Coat, Babe
Liz O'Brien

Take A Warm Coat, Babe is an exhibition of photographic works by Liz O'Brien exploring an experience of intense longing to close an impassable distance within a relationship and the unavoidable acceptance of change and separation. Be it literal distance between lovers separated by travel, or the emotional distance between friends grown apart, O'Brien utilises the processes of film and pinhole and film photography to present intimate and quiet reflections on her conceptual concerns in Take A Warm Coat, Babe.

Liz O'Brien is an interdisciplinary visual artist working in analogue photography, studio drawing and mixed media practices. Having focused on photography throughout her tertiary education, O'Brien has grounded her practice in the use of expired film types, pinhole photography, alchemy, and the incorporation of textiles and salvaged materials. Through amalgamating traditional and contemporary photographic processes, O'Brien's conceptual concerns regarding locational influences on identity, aspects of distance within relationships and experiences of separation are presented in an intimate, reflective manner.

Exhibition dates: 19 Feb - Sun 1 March , 2020

Solo Show
A typical?
Stacey Korfiatis

As the vessels that house human consciousness, our bodies map the course of our lives. From birth, the scars, wrinkles, freckles and “imperfections” we collect tell our individual stories - charting the growth and change of each unique experience. A typical? is a series of hyperreal paintings; un-airbrushed, unaltered portraits that empowers the subject and viewer by challenging conventional definitions of beauty.

Each model who volunteered to be painted for Atypical? describes themselves as having a disability, or a part of their body that does not conform to Western beauty standards. Many of the models also manage mental illness and/or sit somewhere within the LGBTIQA+ spectrum. Baring all: surgical scars, birth marks, stretch marks, wrinkles, and body hair, each model stands before you, allowing the effects of time and experience to tell their story.

While many of these models require mobility aids, appearing with neither aid nor costume circumnavigates the reflexive othering the perception of difference can trigger, drawing the viewer instead to ask “how are we similar?” Atypical? rejects the notion that beauty is homogeneous, and the existence of a universal norm for beauty with respect to age, sexuality, gender, ability or skin tone. Atypical? celebrates the magnificence of bodies whatever their appearance.

Sponsored by City of Yarra

Exhibition dates: 5 Feb - Sun 16 Feb, 2020

Space 1
Long way round
Jennifer Tarry-Smith

Jennifer Tarry-Smith is a Melbourne based artist working in the medium of printmaking and drawing. She produces works that are abstract distillations of her experience of place and memory. The sequence of impressions are informed by Jennifer’s recent travel’s to Europe. In the arabesque line, the arches of moorish architecture are recalled; the soft ochres and turquoise colours are reminiscent of the painted houses of Venice; the velvety texture of pastels and lithography recalling the patina of age. Like a view glimpsed through half closed eyes, there is a sense of recognition of feeling or emotion, the shadowy imprint of the spirit of a place in her work.

Space 2
Pussy
Grace Ware

‘PUSSY’ is a space prompted by the patriarchy and its wonderfully excessive vocabulary around the multiple words used to describe a ‘vagina’. The use of the word vagina has always caused cultural controversy, these cultural issues have sparked a rise to the development of an incredible range of slang terms for the vagina. Despite the force driven behind these words our power does not always lay with them. When you hear the words “pussy, vagina, cunt, cooch, fanny, furry taco” how many of these words hold a negative connotation? How many offend you? How many do you avoid? How many make you laugh? When confronted with these words, do they fuel you’re your shame? Some may spark a lived reality which confronts your discomfort. ‘PUSSY’ is a space which has been made to reclaim the power that these words have held over us and celebrate our vast, complex dictionary of vaginas. It challenges of the stigma around our pussy vocabulary and encourages the active use of these words in and the power of humour to reclaim our shame. ‘PUSSY’ grabs the lingering smell of our pussy squeamishness lurking amongst our current climate and champions its capacity to empower and teach us.

Space 3
Smelly
Evangeline Clark

My intention is for my work to act as a spatial disruption through the ephemeral invasion of colour. My work examines the boundaries between the decorative and the feminine, the grotesque and the pretty, the meaningless and the significant. My aim is to redefine intense shapes and colours not as pejoratively ‘girly’, silly and hollow, but as inherently momentous and powerful. I use the saturated colour of the acrylic paint and the fluffy texture of the faux fur to explore the idea of excessive prettiness that verges on being tacky and ugly.
This installation propels the viewer’s sensory involvement past just passively observing. This work smells and each colour radiates a different scent. Viewers are encouraged to step onto the floor work and engage with the smells emerging from the work.

Exhibition dates: 22 Jan - Sun 2 Feb, 2020

Space 1
The little big
Skylar Ru Silva

‘The little big’ is an intimate and playful exploration of the relationship between self reflection and beauty.

In this series I draw inspiration from the mediocre, the minute and often overlooked; the intricate and changing abstractions in finger smudges on smart phone and tablet screens. They fascinate me. They’re an organic byproduct of a digital function. The transient tire tracks of Automatic reflex, executed with unconscious precision and rhythm.

Space 2
The value of identity
Avan Anwar

War is destruction and leads to displacement of people. Displacment significantly impacts on identity and its deterioration. Only memory rescues identity and connects past with the present and the future. For displaced people identity has a value which connects them with their roots.

Space 3
People I Sought of met
Tim Coleman

I predominately paint with oils and acrylics to try to capture the essence of a brief moment or idea through multiple perspectives both visually and emotionally. Two people could walk down the same road and have completely different experiences; my aim is to create artworks that visually construct fleeting memories that people can read and somehow identify empathetically with some aspect of the image and use this as a starting point to explore what’s happening within the image. I use references from found photos that have been lost or discarded, self-taken photos as well as images formed from my personal experiences. With this series I explore portraits of people I sought of met at a job one day. There were so many new faces and stories that they started to meld together so I decided to paint them based on my distorted memory of who they were. I don’t know them, they are people I sought of met, much like many of the people you have sought of met. The works are painted in acrylic and oil on offcuts of ply from varies building jobs.

Exhibition dates: Wed 8 Jan - Sun 19 Jan, 2020

Space 1
The Noon Hour and Other Cities
Giordano Biondi

Giordano’s most recent work are imaginary cities that set themselves in an eternal midday hour. Noon is the time when the sun flattens the world through the absence of shadows cast by objects, and the demon of the midday hour sows restlessness among things that have briefly lost their weight and consistency.

The viewer then looks at these cities from above, the gaze equivalent to the direction of a sun that shrinks away the shadow of buildings and renders them utopian and ideal, abstract entities without memory. The plazas, streets and courtyards collect the wandering eye and project it along these urban atlases, restless in the midday these cities have appeared in.Giordano’s drawings seek to depict an ideal cityscape as a narrative that invites the gaze to linger in every one of its components. The eye finds itself ringed by the buildings of an open square. It flies and travels through the straight lines of the boulevards, exiting away from the art or entering into it. And each house and palace is the locus of an encounter or an idea, expressed through the peculiarity of its architecture.

The whole picture is then an alphabet or an archive into which the gaze consults, travels, or finds refuge and solace. this fictional city is intended as a sort of dream catcher for the eye, a portal (or perhaps end point) of an invisible land.

Space 2
Impacts and Impressions
Aneta Bozic

No action or presence stands alone, in isolation. We all connect to others in some way. The balance in this interaction and connection with nature seems to be skewed too often at the expense of nature. A growing awareness of the long term impact we are having on the natural environment is increasing attempts to minimise the negative effects, and focus on the positive connections with nature.

This body of work explores these impacts in both concept and process. It uses locally sourced and handmade organic materials and tools, limiting use of pre-made, processed and conventional materials. It experiments with the handmade, the foraged, the imperfect and the organic. It uses processes of steaming, grinding, ripping, detailed and abstract mark making, paper making and eco-printing to express both the constructive
and destructive impressions of our relationship to nature.

Some of the materials used include, but are not limited to: jacaranda flowers, eucalyptus leaves, flowering maple, jasmine vine, green walnuts, roses, mulberry, smoke bush, thistle, red cabbage, onions, herbs, various berries, and all sorts of weeds; bamboo, twigs, feathers and hair; crushed earth, charcoal, twine, vines and wine, and recycled frames. These materials were used to create inks and pigments, in paper making and
eco printing and mark making tools.

** DONATE of sales to Animal Rescue Collective.

Space 3
Where's the Petrol Dingo
Paul Pirie

A soupy hodge - lodge of snarling Australian and curvaceous women, stranding time and place in an imagined universe of sand and storms. An exploration into that sinking feeling, a real hard try to paint fear. The petrol dingo is the man under the exhaust pipe.

** DONATE any of sales to @wireswildliferescure.