CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
16 March / 21 April 2024

Gallery one

LAURA WOODWARD
This Fearsome Drop

In the early phases of developing this exhibition, Woodward drew some strange amorphous forms in her sketchbook. The word “amoeba” came to mind. In exploring what amoebas actually are, beyond a unicellular organism, she came across the following description:

“Amoebas move by using [temporary] bulging parts called pseudopodia… These are extensions of the cell’s membrane. An amoeba can reach out and grab some surface with a pseudopod, using it to crawl forward… Pseudopodia also help amoebas eat. A stretched-out pseudopod can engulf an amoeba’s prey. That allows this microbe to swallow bacteria, fungal cells, algae — even small worms.*1”

In the early months of her third pregnancy, Woodward was struck by the resonances of this description of what happens inside a gestating body.

The way in which the human foetus overtakes the mother’s body during pregnancy has this feel about it. The foetus needs iron, it pulls whatever iron is available from its host, irrespective of the mother’s needs. Calcium? Strip it from her bones. The foetus also leaves behind remnants of its DNA in the mother’s body – known as microchimeric fetal cells *2 – forever altering her genetic and cellular profiles.

Woodward sees these amoebic, pseudopodic tendencies in this sense of the micro, single-body resource-hoarding which happens between mother-as-host and baby-as-parasite. However, watching some videos of amoebas in action, she was struck by how analogous their activity is with the macro level of human behaviour. Millions of tiny individual cellular units move together to grab resources. This image of a microscopic cellular structure can be equally read as a mapping of human expansion – of taking resources because they are there, of over-draw, of morphing, of reaching and stripping wherever resources are available.

So, this has become an exhibition about resources, about life-bearing, breathing, and standing on a precipice. Of the tension between the personal choices that we make in bringing children into the world, and the societal and global considerations and impacts of these choices. Of literally keeping things alive: foetuses, children, eco-systems, humankind. About standing on the edge of climate collapse. About our insatiable drive for technology and its increasing creep into the deepest of evolutionary impetuses – that drive to procreate. About the sensation of holding tiny, fragile things in our hands. Of how a single drop of matter can lead to a whole life, an entire potential for love, care, power, destruction and joy.

At the edge of this fearsome drop, we stand. Holding onto hope for life – again, and then again, and then again.

…..

*1.Kwok, Roberta, “Amoebas are crafty, shape-shifting engineers”, Science News Explores, 17 January 2019, accessed 2 March 2024, https://www.snexplores.org/article/amoebas-are-crafty-shape-shifting-engineers

*2.Shute, Nancy, “Beyond Birth: A Child's Cells May Help or Harm the Mother Long after Delivery”, Scientific American, 30 April 2010, accessed 2 March 2024, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fetal-cells-microchimerism/

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Gallery two

JOSHUA COCKING
A foreign body

During Cocking’s years living in remote Indigenous communities, he was always conscious of being an outsider. That despite Cocking’s good intentions, he was an interloper in an unfamiliar place. These paintings capture implausible orbs floating in the landscape, attempting to blend into their surroundings, reflecting and absorbing colour. But ultimately, they remain a foreign body; they do not belong.  The Kimberley works represent Joshua Cocking’s ongoing attempts to immerse in a country and culture that is not his own. Conversely, the landscapes of south-western Victoria where he grew up are now also foreign; a sense of belonging eroded over half a lifetime lived away.

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Ceramic space

ANGELA HAYES
Slab

It all starts with a Slab: A slice from a lump of clay - simple and unformed. The slab commences a ceramic hand-building process and also describes the ceramic form. It is the fabric of Angela Hayes’ ceramics and the canvas for expression.

With slab, the artist soothes her inner drama of contradictions. Seeking control and discipline with cautious crafting of form and edge, which is then abandoned for freedom in expression with unpredictable glaze finishes.

Angela Hayes’ ceramic sculptures originate from the study of the classic pouring vessel many years ago. The lip, the body, the foot, the spout, and the handle have evolved from wheel-thrown vessels to contemporary slab-made architectonic forms. Her work has departed from the functional constraints of the vessel and instead has become a receptacle for her artist’s voice.

Hayes studied Fine Arts - Ceramics at Queensland College of Art and later completed a Bachelor and Master of Landscape Architecture at the University of Melbourne. Her landscape architecture design practice, research, and teaching have developed a distinct style and keen eye for design which is demonstrated in her ceramic work. Angela has received numerous awards for her design work. She has exhibited her ceramic sculptures interstate, in China, and at numerous galleries in Melbourne.

Hayes creates ceramic sculptures from her inner-city studio in Melbourne. She finds inspiration in her urban environment through experimentation with traditional ceramics processes and refinement of new technical discoveries.

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PAST EXHIBITIONS
03 February / 10 March

Gallery One

GREG WOOD
Nature Nurture

Greg Wood is a painter of the earthy and ethereal. The observation of atmospheric shifts in landscapes has been central to his practice for the past 25 years. He is attracted to observing the dynamic and subtle states of transformation enhanced by changing conditions, weather, and light.

In a recent residency in the ex-mining town of Queenstown, West coast of Tasmania,

Wood observed and created a series he describes as ‘resurrected landscapes’, images of places altered by human activity and in the process of regeneration. He describes these landscapes as occupying a liminal space between abstraction and realism reminiscent of his style, that is, the physical abstraction wrought by human intervention and the shifting forces of atmosphere in the environment and the realism of nature’s capacity for remodeling itself as it heals. He describes the act of painting these wounded landscapes as acts of restitution and contrition.

Wood currently resides in one such landscape, the Central Victorian Goldfields, on Dja Dja Wurrung country. Described by local indigenous people as ‘Upside down country’ after the disruptions of the gold rush, this deeply disfigured landscape, marred and churned by mining, is in the process of reconfiguring. This singular landscape, with its saturated coppery hues and shadowy crenulations, impels Wood to create works that hold the unsettled beauty of a place both devastated and re-emerging. It is in this way that his art bears witness to the immense power of nature’s capacity for adaptation and repair.

For Wood, the specifics of place are not as important as the emotional and figural afterimages that endure. He paints places traversed through sensory impression, inviting the viewer to enter the felt sense of place, inciting flares of memory and emotion – landscapes of the familiar and unfamiliar. Wood describes his work as a ‘slow release’ –the nuance of his paintings gradually revealing themselves to the viewer. The art of Melbourne tonalist Clarice Beckett has been a formative influence for him, as revealed in his translucent, gestural layers of muted colour, flattened form, merging tones, and diffuse light.

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Gallery Two

YURIA OKAMURA
Healers

Healers is a series of ceramic tile paintings that portray medicinal plants combined with geometric forms inspired by the symbolic use of geometry in architecture and decoration of diverse religious and mystical traditions. Yuria Okamura references how deities and saints are often depicted with geometric ornamentations, and examines how geometry might aid in portraying plants in a similar light to evoke holistic interpretations of the natural world as seen through the lens of animism and herbalism, traditions in which plants are held sacred. Diverging from her works on paper, these ceramic paintings are inspired by tile paintings used to adorn sacred places in diverse cultures. In this way, Okamura hopes to emulate the contemplative quality of such spaces and invite the viewers to engage in meaningful interpretations of the natural world around us. 

The medicinal plants depicted in this exhibition are native to Australia, which Okamura had the privilege of learning about from Bunurong/Scottish herbalist and author Sonia Marie.
Okamura is grateful to Sonia for sharing this knowledge and allowing her to connect with the plants of this land more deeply. 

This project is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. 

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Ceramic gallery

LAURA VELEFF
Beauty Spot

Beauty Spot is a part of Laura Veleff’s ongoing series that explores historic mining sites - places of plunder, but also of regenerating beauty.  Having moved to the Central Victorian Goldfields, Dja Dja Wurrung Country, in 2021, the project was initially borne of Veleff’s desire to develop a deeper connection to her new surroundings.  From here, she became interested in the enduring geophysical and visual impact of extraction practices on the landscape, and how her own pottery-making is implicit in such industries.

Earlier this year Veleff visited Tasmania’s Queenstown, another site that has been dramatically altered by past mining; the completely denuded mountain ranges that surround the town are referred to by locals as a ‘moonscape'.  Just as the ‘upside down’ Goldfields and the ‘moonscape’ of Queenstown are linked through their shared history of environmental destruction, they are also sites of enduring natural beauty and rehabilitation.  From these disused sites, Veleff collected materials such as ochre, slate, clay deposits and rocks, and used them to make her own glazes, slip, oxides and clay bodies. This time and labour-intensive practice of personally taking the materials from the land and processing them by hand, not only deepened her knowledge of the geo/physical area, it also gave her a real and immediate sense of the finite and precious nature of the materials that she was working with. Made up of both single and composite forms, the works, when viewed together, reference the varied ‘upside down’ landforms that now exist, evidencing former industrial practices.

These pieces hold within them a narrative of the site; both of its past and enduring present.  They also speak to Veleff’s profound respect for natural materials - honouring those that are left following what is of perceived value has been taken - and the conflict that exists within the practice of extraction itself. 
Further, the works embody Veleff’s personal experience in situating herself within/and relating to a place, and more broadly, implicates her own role as a potter, essentially taking from the land to make her work.  

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PAST EXHIBITIONS
18 November / 07 January

Gallery One

NATALIE RYAN
Night Creatures

Night Creatures looks at the effect of artificial light at night on wildlife through a science fiction lens. Drawing from scientific studies in which both behavioural and physical mutations have occurred in nocturnal animals induced by the pervasive presence of artificial light in their environments. The show combines these findings with pop culture, folklore, mythology, and symbolism surrounding nocturnal animals. This fusion of the factual and the fantastical hopes to create a thought-provoking narrative that challenges our perceptions of the natural world.

Through her work, Ryan employs the repetition of form, seen in editions and multiples, subtly depicting variations in color, pose, and finish. This approach is a homage to her experiences working with animal specimens in Anatomical and Natural History collections, where the subtle nuances in each specimen reveal the intricate diversity of nature itself.

This body of work encourages contemplation of the profound impacts of our actions on the animal kingdom, reminding us of the delicate balance between nature and the ever-expanding human footprint.

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Gallery Two

BECC ORSZAG
A whisper and a hush

A whisper and a hush explores concepts of sacred space and religious experience intertwined with the complexities of human memory, perception and the blurring of boundaries between the real and imagined.

By embracing the concept of paramnesia; a phenomenon where memories become distorted or confused, Ország challenges our preconceived notions of what is real and what is not, embracing the fragmented and fragile nature of our recollections whilst contemplating the nature of reality itself.

Complimentary to these ideas is Sehnsucht, a German term that encompasses the deep yearning for something unattainable or transcendent, in particular the universal human yearning for utopia.

By composing landscapes filled with both unattainable beauty and contradictions, Orszag explores the complex interplay between utopic and dystopic ideals. With the recurring utilisation of both appropriated and imagined iconography, each symbol becomes a conduit for personal introspection and reflection. A world both familiar and ambiguous is created, allowing the audience to interpret and imbue the works with their own associations.

Becc Ország is a Melbourne-based artist working predominantly within the medium of drawing. Ország’s practice is primarily an investigation into sacred space and religious experience, in which she explores the practice of idolatry, the relationships between the man-made monument and concepts of the holy, sacred and divine. Her work addresses the fine line between Utopic and Dystopic ideals by critiquing widely accepted political, religious and social belief systems.

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Ceramic gallery

RACHELLE AUSTEN, ANDREI DAVIDOFF, PHIL ELSON,  IRENE GRISHIN-SELZER, CASSIE HANSEN, ANGELA HAYES, LAUREN JOFFE, JANETTA KERR-GRANT, MINAAL LAWN, KIRSTEN PERRY, GEORGINA PROUD, DAVID RAY, ALICHIA VAN RHIJN, DAWN VACHON, LAURA VELEFF

A contemporary jug

While a jug may still be designed to hold and pour liquids, it may also be purely artistic and conceptual, challenging traditional notions of what a jug should be.

Designed and created in current times, reflecting current artistic trends and styles, a contemporary jug gives the opportunity to explore and appreciate the beauty and diversity of jugs as functional and/or artistic object.

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07 OCTOBER / 12 NOVEMBER

Gallery One

CAMERON ROBBINS
River Pulse

Equinox Trembling 2hrs Sept 21 2023 Loddon River, 2023, ink on paper, 56 x 76 cm

This project offers a voice to a river, to make a statement in the cultural realm of art. As the wet weather of the recent Triple La Niña climatic oscillation gives way to the oncoming El Niño dry climate event, River Monitor documents this transition on a stretch of the Upper Loddon River. 

It is Cameron Robbins' hope that some sense of genius loci, spirit of place, and the feeling of the river comes through this body of work. 

Following the momentous decision taken in New Zealand to endow legal entity status to the Whanganui River, many other countries have adopted similar protections for their own rivers. At its beautiful, pulsing and clear state in Glenlyon, the Loddon River most definitely shows us that it has an environmental role, a personality and a lot of character which also deserves recognition.

In an active flowing stretch of the upper Loddon, the River Monitor drawing instrument is tethered to some strong Dwarf River Callistemon (Callistemon Sieberi), logs or rocks. It floats on a camouflaged inflatable SUP (stand-up paddle board) so that the water turbines are always kept at a constant depth. To document changes in the river depth, the whole instrument is placed on a stand and as the river level drops, the turbines receive less water and eventually stop. 

Drawings are set up and allowed to accumulate marks for varying lengths of time. Water from river splashes, mists and rains are allowed to play on the inks and pigments.

Some of the watercolour paper was coloured in the studio using inks and pigments also, to give high contrast to the metallic silver, gold, white and coloured inks of the pens.

Two waterwheels turn in response to the river flow. Hand-made in the Castlemaine studio - from recycled aluminium, adapted high-performance bicycle rims, brass fittings, stainless steel shafts and bearings.  Through a series of linkages, right angle drives, swivels and stainless rods and wires, the kinetic energy is transferred to two pens cooperating and arguing to make marks on watercolour paper.

The drawing board itself is on a double swivel arrangement, with a long aluminium rudder making the paper oscillate in response to each eddy and current.

These motions are designed to give maximum freedom to the instrument to make drawings from the dynamic inputs of the river energy.

This is Robbins’ way of visualising the course of this river entity across the landscape and across the night sky.

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Gallery Two & Project Space

NICHOLAS BURRIDGE
Stone Tools

The oldest examples of human technology ‘Stone Tools’ will be some of the longest-lasting anthropic artefacts. With this starting point the artworks included in this exhibition interrogate modern materials and their inherent instability. Now favouring steel over stone, the ability of materials to resist entropy has reduced and with that their ability to become artefacts. Materials within this exhibition have been selected because of their stability be that mechanical or chemical resistance and those properties have been exploited. This exhibition contrasts modern technologies and materials with ancient ones to interrogate which narratives will remain when we’ve gone.

Nicholas Burridge draws upon practice-based research to unpack the complex relationship between industrialization and nature. His work interrogates the term ‘Terraforming’ focusing attention upon the ways that humans are re-engineering the earth and our current geologic epoch the Anthropocene. Many of Burridge’s projects are site-specific with multiple experimental outcomes, this has led to him having research residencies at Melbournes Living Museum of the West, Canberra Glassworks, The Quarry and Jacks Magazine a heritage munitions warehouse. In all these instances the aim has been to reveal latent narratives and metaphors that are embedded in materials.

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PAST EXHIBITIONS
02 SEPTEMBER / 01 OCTOBER

Gallery One

ROBERT HAGUE
EMPIRE

EMPIRE draws into focus sovereignty and brings together key works in porcelain, lithography, sculpture, and installation. With everything from highly detailed drawings to riot bricks, and the collected mass of 25,000 jellybeans, Robert Hague mixes humour with the grandeur of antiquity and an often-biting commentary on the modern world.

Following on from the Melbourne Now 2023, NGV commission, EMPIRE includes two new folding-fan prints: Victoria and 2018. Glorious and yet grotesque, two prominent statues suffer a sudden gorilla recontextualisation. A single NGV Venus is also included.

Slip-cast bricks, posing as vases replete with dried flowers, beg to riot. Enormous decorative plates in porcelain and gold, such as Cooks’ Landing and King & Queen, hang with a Mine Yours which gently repeats in Warhol colours.

Hague says that “within the deceit of pattern and decoration, there lies a darker truth” and in 99%, a coma-inducing bowl of blood-red jellybeans, he aligns the deceit of decoration with that opiate of the masses, sugar, and the passive crowd - the powerless 99%.

Complimentary jellybeans provided.

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Gallery Two & Project Space

IN-KIND COLLECTIVE
Something Holding These Bodies In-Kind (30:55)

As part of the Collective Polyphony Festival
Modelling peace-building architecture and infrastructure, the Collective Polyphony Festival is a ground-breaking multi-space event that fosters and nurtures emerging and established artist collectives. It is founded upon the central idea of artists supporting artists.

This extraordinary gathering brings together 10 local and international, emerging and established artist collectives across 7 exhibition spaces.

Something Holding these Bodies In-Kind (30:55) allows for individual journeys to be drawn through the notion of an artist-collective. An artist-collective is defined as an initiative resulting from a group of artists working together, under their own management, towards shared aims. For this exhibition, the artists will consider what current journeys they are on. Through a process of shared creative practice, they will begin to dismantle the individuality of their own projects, finding threads of exchange with one another. The resulting work will simultaneously challenge the independence of their own work while considering what an artist-collective can be.

Chris Fontana, Corinna Berndt, Josephine Mead, Leila Gerges, Lucy Foster, Marcela Gómez Escudero, Nina Sanadze, Sarah Rudledge, Sofi Basseghi, Tara Gilbee, Tina Stefanou

Curated by: Sarah Rudledge

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22 JULY / 27 AUGUST

Gallery One

KEZ HUGHES
You never got me right

In  age where digital images dominate our experience, Kez Hughes’ paintings are lovingly rendered to communicate stillness, beauty, and provide a new recording of artworks lost to their respective histories and locations.
Through repositioning and recreating paintings from existing documentary images of art, Hughes contemplates ideas of originality, authenticity and authorship.

‘You never got me right’ brings together painted adaptations of works by Australian Artists including Lucina Lane, Heather b Swann, Olah Cohn and Nat Ryan amongst others.

Kez Hughes lives and works in Melbourne and has been appropriating images of artists’ work since 2006. Hughes was selected for the 2023 Sulman Prize currently showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. 

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Gallery Two

WANDA GILLESPIE
The ministry for mystical reckoning

The divine mathematics in nature has long transfixed Wanda Gillespie's artistic endeavours. Her bespoke abacus sculptures continue this enquiry through the illustration of abstracted forms in the landscape, linking our thoughts around value structures and economy to the natural environment and, in turn, our effect on it.

For her Stockroom exhibition, The Ministry for Mystical Reckoning, she turns her gaze to native Australian flora. Orchids, Warratah and Grevillea become entwined in the inner brass workings of her unique iterations of this ancient counting device.

Materials are selected for their energetic potency. Native timbers, once living, come loaded with the secrets of seasons of time, while Beads taken from broken Japanese Soroban (abacus) are infused with the invisible worlds of spirits (in Japanese folklore, tools over 100 years old acquire a spirit). The laboured craftsmanship required to create Gillespie’s abaci, runs counter to the perpetual growth models of our consumerist society.

The hourglass, another instrument for measuring, is brought into this play of objects as the artist considers the elusive elastic nature of time. Our linear consistent perception of time has been challenged in recent years through lockdowns, and the notion that time is constructed by the observer has become more evident. Time is an illusion created by the senses. Outside this human experience, as described in many faiths, time as we know it doesn’t exist.

A subtle being looks on, observing the movements of these earthly devices from the timelessness of altered dimensions, or heavenly realms. Its body, chip carved in a rhythmic pattern, references the artist’s thoughts on the passing of time. In eras gone by, small cuts in sticks were used to document the passing of time, hence the saying ‘in the nick of time.’ The deep sense of time encountered through the peeling back of layers of timber rings has been an enduring obsession for the artist as she creates artefacts from this epoch.

Together with the abaci, these carefully crafted objects symbolise our significant moment in history, and an urgency to act on preservation as time seemingly runs out. 

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Ceramic Space

GEORGINA PROUD
Flux

Flux is an exploration of materiality that investigates the chemical reactions and transformation of materials that occur during the ceramic-making and firing process. These works combine a range of materials and techniques that I have been experimenting with over the past four years including the incorporation of novel materials, such as sea glass, seeds, and perlite, into different clay bodies. The interplay of the introduced materials and the clay creates a unique process of development. 

The reaction of the foreign materials within the relatively stable properties of the original clay structure creates points of volatility and fragility, texture, and imperfection. These surfaces bear the imprint of the elemental reactions that occur during the firing process, giving them a rich depth and unique character. This exploration of the material nature of ceramics constantly challenges traditional notions of form and function, opening doors to new artistic possibilities. This interaction becomes the driving force behind the unique developmental process of each artwork. As the clay harmonizes with the embedded elements, a metamorphosis occurs—an alchemical fusion that creates a visual language that speaks to the infinite possibilities of material manipulation. It is an exploration of the dynamic relationship between materials, craftsmanship, and the fiery alchemy of the kiln.

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Project Space

WANDA GILLESPIE & NATASHA CANTWELL
Calculating Impossible Problems

Artist: Wanda Gillespie
Filmmaker: Natasha Cantwell

Hands: Sean Molloy and Wanda Gillespie

The absurdity of calculating impossible problems is exercised through a series of collaborative films by sculptor Wanda Gillespie and filmmaker Natasha Cantwell. A curious interaction of hand movements show Gillespie’s sculptured abacus in use. As the two players take turns, we search for a mathematical system, an order from the seemingly random chaos of movement and bead numbering. Is this a secret form of communication? A type of Morse code? Or could this be a most exquisite love letter to the world told through a complex mathematical equation?

Shot during a period of lockdown, when an elasticity is created around time and the counting of hours and days start to lose meaning, these films suggest a meditative playfulness to the ordering of things. At a time when we teeter on the precipice of huge shifts in our collective experience, fuelled by the fragility of economic structures and our environmental crisis, Gillespie and Cantwell offer us a chess match as a puppet show, and ask if our desire to find meaning in disorder is simply a symptom of humanity unmoored from ‘normal’ life?

PAST EXHIBITIONS
10 JUNE / 16 JULY

Gallery One

ANGELA CHAUVIN
Recent Studio Paintings

Angela Chauvin paints in-situ to explore the translation of direct human observations through paint.

She has worked with the science of flow states and meditative approaches to observational work. Chauvin is interested in how these different states of consciousness allow her to use colour and the paint medium to mark a synaesthetic translation of her experience.

In these recent works Angela Chauvin has been particularly enjoying elements in the work that emerge from the conditions of working in situ, such as the fluency of expression afforded by the sketched line, and the condensation of time marked in paint with the changing of the light.

This collection of recent paintings was made in-situ across three studio locations: a studio above the Tinpot cafe; the VCA stables; and RMIT’s postgraduate studio space repurposed from the Gossard lingerie factory.

Sharing the work is an important part of the creative process to Angela Chauvin, where one collectively explores the metaphysical and communicative consequences of marking the immediate material experience.

Gallery Two

ANTHEA KEMP
The decision is emerging

This body of work represents the continuation of Anthea Kemp's fascination of nature and her creative process derived from nature and place. Through these paintings, Anthea captures a holistic approach, allowing her intuition to form a process to balance compositions inspired from visuals found in nature. The decisions that arise are an outcome of her attempts to distil the interplay between light and shadow, the graceful form of a donkey orchid, and the expressive lines found within trees. Simultaneously, she embraces the unpredictable nature of the painting medium.

This exploratory process enables the boundaries between representation and abstraction to shift, resulting in artworks that exist in a state of transition. Working on these paintings concurrently in her studio establishes a connection between them, evident in the shared decisions regarding marks, colours, and motifs. This continuity allows an energetic flow from one painting to the next, highlighting the iterative process she employs to bring each piece to resolution.

Anthea Kemp has been exhibiting since 2015, showcasing her work in solo exhibitions in Melbourne, Regional Victoria, and Sydney. Additionally, her artwork has been included in group exhibitions across various locations, including Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, and regional Victoria. Noteworthy exhibition spaces include Blindside ARI, LON Gallery, Saint Cloche, Benalla Art Gallery, and Wangaratta Art Gallery. Anthea has also been recognized as a finalist in the Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize (2016), the Atheneum Club Visual Research Award (2019), and the Len Fox Award at Castlemaine Art Museums (2022). In 2021, she was awarded the Macfarlane Fund Kyneton Residency. Anthea's work can be found in the collection of the Wangaratta Art Gallery, as well as in numerous private collections.

Ceramic Space

DAWN VACHON
Props

To maintain continuous clarity of thought without doubt, digression, or deformation is rather rare. And so my work is the result of several half-sentences and truncated revelations, arranged together in an attempt to organise the wrinkles and the clamour into something faintly melodious.

In Props ceramic elements are combined with  somewhat sentimental found objects  in an ambiguous balancing act questioning roles and relationships of support.

Dawn studied visual arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, receiving her BFA in 2008. Since relocating to Australia in 2009 she has continued  sculptural and functional ceramics practices.  Notably she was included with a group of outsiders showing as part of The Australian Ceramics Association's OVERUNDERSIDEWAYSDOWN exhibition and their following exhibition Manifest. Further, her piece Beard and Tie was acquired by the Gold Coast City Gallery as part of their 2016 international ceramic art award. Dawn can often be found throwing, handbuilding and concocting glazes at her home-studio in Coburg.

PAST EXHIBITIONS
29 APRIL / 04 JUNE

Gallery One

TROY EMERY
What will happen when the sun dies

Emery's artistic practice is focused on sculpture, with a particular interest in exploring the animal form. He often utilizes mass-produced, synthetic materials such as polyester fringing, pompoms, and tinsel to create colourful and vibrant sculptures of animals. Emery uses these materials to create artificial, technicolour pelts over animal forms, blurring the boundaries between fine art, museums, natural history, craft, and the domestic space.

Emery’s work also looks at his own personal anxiety as well as a collective anxiety around our position within the nature. He views the animal form as being representative of the other, an outsider to the experience of being human, and the precariousness of living beings time within the history and future of our universe. They function as both decorative motifs and tokens of ecological ruination and alienation.

His work’s obscure forms under lurid colour and textures, exploring a materiality through the use of mass-produced decorative craft components. These function as a point of opposition to the traditions of hard figurative sculpture. Emery takes much inspiration from ancient and classical sculpture and antiquities, using them as points of reference for work that contemplates humanity’s beginnings, future, and inevitable end.

Troy Emery has exhibited his work across Australia and internationally since graduating from a Masters of Fine Arts at The University of Sydney in 2009. Troy’s work is held in various private and public collections, including National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank, City of Townsville, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, Deakin University Art Museum, Deloitte Australia, Macquarie University Art Gallery, Maitland Regional Art Gallery, and Newcastle Art Gallery.

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Gallery Two

HAYLEY ARJONA
ΩMNI

Hayley Arjona lives and paints on a farm in Glenhope near Kyneton. A practicing artist for over 20 years, her creative journey has been unrelentless, non-conforming, and ever evolving.

Hayley has completed a Master of Art Therapy from La Trobe University Bundoora (2020), a Master of Fine Art from the Victorian College of the Arts (2020), and Bachelor of Visual Arts with first class honours from the South Australian School of Art, University of South Australia (1998). Hayley’s work has been exhibited throughout Australia, her work is held public collections, of the Art Gallery of South Australia and Artbank. Hayley is represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Victoria.

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Ceramic Space

ALICHIA VAN RHIJN
Pink Moon

‘Pink Moon’ by Alichia van Rhijn, presents sculptural works that reference early memories of childhood, both before her immigration to Australia and after. A series of works have been presented, some operating as childhood self-portraits, some alluding to memories of childhood toys and some presented as ‘rattles’; asking to be held and listened to.

These multi-faceted elements and anthropomorphic forms are in a constant state of flux. Shifting and changing as they span the fluidity of time, these forms investigate phenomenological notions, alluding to personal and shared experience, memory, nostalgia and trauma. Through the use of distilled minimalist forms, symbolic and ritualistic totems are arranged throughout the space, hoping to initiate pause and contemplation.

van Rhijn’s installations catalogue her experience of displacement through material investigation, where memory and experience of place are key elements. ‘Making as thinking’ paired with an experimental approach to process and technology underpins the creation of objects that float between the real and a child-like whimsical world that elicits an urge to interact and play.

Alichia van Rhijn is a South African born Australian artist. With a background in architecture and design she has a passion for creating sculptural and installation-based objects and forms that examine memory, trace, trauma, experience and loss. Solo shows include; ‘A Sense Of Being’, Gallerysmith (2019); ‘The Middle Distance’, Boom Gallery (2019); ‘My Mother Told Me (Never Wear Pink And Red Together)’, Stockroom Kyneton (2020); ‘Smoke Signals’, Stockroom Kyneton (2021); and most recently ‘Lemon Light’ at Sabbia Gallery (2022).

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PAST EXHIBITIONS
18 MARCH / 23 APRIL

Gallery One

MATHIEU BRIAND
Êtres Présents

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Ceramic Space

RACHELLE AUSTEN
Sine Pondere et Pondere

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Gallery Two

JEMIMA LUCAS
Lamentations of a body no longer your own

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PAST EXHIBITIONS
04 FEBRUARY / 12 MARCH

gallery one

CARLY FISCHER & EDWINA STEVENS
Velodrome

Velodrome is a collaborative, site-specific sculptural and audiovisual installation by Carly Fischer and Edwina Stevens that responds to the Coburg Velodrome as a point of departure for investigating some of the intersecting details and histories of Coburg, Melbourne. Oscillating around Coburg's industrial fringes, the installation reflects on how these in-between spaces and their accumulations of forgotten fragments, traces and tones reveal hidden histories and generate improvisational dialogues with local places. In the installation, sculptural, video and sonic fragments collected from these places are reassembled and reconstructed into a constantly shifting conversation throughout the duration of the exhibition. Through its intersecting loops, layers and accumulations, 'Velodrome' considers the importance of creating more generative engagements with our local places through their peripheral spaces. Re-contextualised from the artists' local, suburban Melbourne environment to Kyneton, with a few accumulations along the way, the installation specifically reflects on how the hyper-local can be translated and generate dialogues with other places.

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gallery two

JARRAD MARTYN
Polar Front

Polar Front explores humanity's relationship with the natural environment through intersecting family and world histories. Martyn's inspiration for this new body of work is through film photographs his Father took whilst working as a helicopter pilot, based at Casey Station in Antarctica during the 1980s.          
As Antarctica has experienced some of the most rapid warmings on Earth it has significantly changed since the photographs were taken. Once stable ice shelves are melting faster, the declining habitat of several Penguin species and the human footprint in the region are increasing. In the past, the photographs were personal memories of a far-off alien land but are now foreboding and darker.

Martyn uses the principles of bricolage, something constructed from a diverse range of things, to bring together academic research and imagery. Pictorial forms are assimilated into different contexts and are collaged together to encourage the creation of new conversations and symbolic connections. The works in 'Polar Front' combine archival photographs from Antarctica, with appropriated early-Colonial Australian painting language, climate modeling and weather forecast patterns, and Romantic painting techniques. The dripping of paint, blurring of figuration, and shifts in texture conceive landscapes that are in flux and out-of-this-world. This slippage attempts to occupy the space between the public consciousness of the changing climate and the individual's impact, all whilst confronting the personal and familial significance of memory-making and keeping.

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ceramic space

MINAAL LAWN
Vessel As Deity

Minaal Lawn’s work explores cultural identity through object symbolism, childhood stories and the experience of living between two cultures, ultimately celebrating their reconciliation through abstracted forms and colour.

Vessel As Deity, continues Minaal’s fascination with sculptural and aesthetic elements of traditional Hindu temple architecture. The concept of Murti (idol of worship) is abstracted through a recontextualization of the vessel to an adorned form, edifying it beyond a container.
The sacred composition of the Vessels and their colour expressionism, the wall (aids for aniconic meditation) and the dot mandala, creating a Rasa (sentiment, essence) of silence and tranquility.

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PAST EXHIBITIONS
22 OCTOBER / 27 NOVEMBER

gallery one

CECILIA FOGELBERG
We Are All Crackpots

“Six years ago, I started to paint pots and urns when my friend died. 

I had at the time a reoccurring dream where I was seeking medical advice from the doctors after experiencing incredible stomach pain. In the dream, I visited a doctor and after the examination and x-ray, was told that a strange object was stuck in my stomach. It needed to be removed. They cut me open and extracted a beautiful urn, a container with my dead friend’s ashes.    

These dreams made me think about pots and urns as the vessels that hold a human life; each of us, our ashes cradled in a unique container holding individual beliefs, dreams, and opinions. As I continued painting, I started to think about all living beings as vessels with distinctive contents. The pots and urns in my work came to symbolise human life.

Over time I began to see that the vessel could also be an object into which humans could place emotions, such as grief. My interests segued into making pots and weaving baskets. A new tradition emerged as I made a raffia basket in the week between Christmas and New Year. Now, every year, I ritually prepare a basket to mark the year’s end. The basket symbolises a place where I put away the past, creating space to welcome the new year.

This series, We Are All Crackpots was painted during the lockdowns of 2020.

My paintings are a reflection on the ‘monkey business’ of humankind and how things seem to have gone a bit ‘Mickey Mouse,’ in the cauldron of popular culture, opinions, and virtue signaling. 

We Are All Crackpots comments on our increasingly polarised society but ultimately seeks to celebrate that are all crackpots in our own way.”

 - Cecilia Fogelberg, August 2022

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gallery two

LAETITIA OLIVIER-GARGANO
Making sense of nonsense

Trying to make sense of the chaotic nature of the last few years, Laetitia depicts her experiences in a cheerfully nihilistic way. Aestheticising hyper-real forms to convey emotions and memories, Making sense of nonsense is almost a painting show, not quite a sculpture show.

Carefully painted ‘hyper-surreal’ resin sculptures are laid out like constructivist paintings among a vivid, energetic blue. Lunch leftovers become abstract collages and detailed sculptures double as whimsical candelabras. Each life-like scene is intently placed as a tactile translation of memory.

Food is the defining feature of this exhibition, as a joyful comfort, as helpful procrastination, and as a reminder of loved ones. Fleshy oysters ooze their ‘bougie’ picnic opulence. An impassive brick of minced meat stresses the appreciation of boredom.

All timely reminders that life is just a bit nonsense.

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ceramic space

PIP BYRNE
To the River

Presented by Craft Victoria and Stockroom Kyneton

The river winds through a landscape collecting its possessions as if gathering memories. Some items dancing on the surface, while others travel unseen until they resurface somewhere further downstream. As described beautifully by Olivia Laing in her book To the River – “A river passing through a landscape catches the world and gives it back redoubled: a shifting, glinting world more mysterious than the one we customarily inhabit.”

This work is part of an ongoing exploration into the use of objects as tools for contemplation and the relationship this has to memory and imagination. The work aims to explore the overlap between creating objects that provide space for contemplation and capturing memory through the ceramic form.

Each piece quietly evokes a unique story to its viewer. This subtlety allows memories to resonate or stories to be imagined, shifting like the ebb and flow of the river.

This exhibition is presented in partnership with Craft Victoria and Stockroom Kyneton as part of Craft Contemporary.

Pip Byrne is a Naarm/Melbourne-based ceramic artist. Her practice manipulates scale, form and texture to capture moments of playfulness, simplicity and scenes of light. By experimenting with hand-building techniques, her works extend the limits of traditional forms and ideas and tell the tales of the medium’s contrasts – strength/delicacy, grounding/lightness, fluidity/rigidity. Pip's background in landscape architecture informs her understanding of the space around us. She is fascinated with the process of creating with clay, and the wandering of spaces within that the practice allows – exploring our inner and outer worlds.

Image: Photography Annika Kafcaloudis

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