// Current & upcoming projects

Between buildings as between stars

Curated by Amber Koroluk-Stephenson

Schoolhouse Gallery, Rosny Farm Arts Centre, lutriwita/Tasmania

25 October - 17 November 2025

Between buildings as between stars brings together the work of Andy Hutson, Alicia King, Georgia Lucy, Kate Marshall, Ali Noble, Meg Walch and Grace Wood to explore the intersections between the known tangibility of material worlds and spaces that are unknown, mysterious, fictitious, or speculative.

Drawing on the popular modern paraphrase, ‘as above, so below’, from the medieval Hermetic text of the Emerald Tablet, this exhibition delves into the human desire to uncover meaning and understanding, in physical spaces of personal and collective experience, as well as spaces that are out of reach or yet to be revealed.

This exhibition acts as a meditation on notions of wonder, alluding to material and imagined forces of the body, alchemy, science, the occult, cosmology, technology and art history. Together, the artists will explore realms of uncharted territory and those that echo familiarities and imaginaries of the everyday.

Image: Grace Wood, Demarcations (orange), photographic prints on organic linen/cotton fabric, 114 X 150 cm

Discovery Collection 23/24

Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, lutruwita/Tasmania

28 September 2024 - 2 February 2025

Since 1842, QVMAG has been dedicated to showcasing Tasmania’s diverse natural and cultural heritage. As the largest regional collection in Australia with over 1.5 million objects, the Collection stands out for its scale and multidisciplinary focus.

The Discovery Collection 23/24 exhibition highlights a selection of acquisitions made over the past two years, including significant historical objects, rare natural specimens, and remarkable works of art by both established and emerging local artists.

Image: Australian Painted Ladies at Mills Plains, Tasmania, 2023, oil on linen, 142 x 142 cm

// Past projects & events

SITE: Richmond, Artist Talks

Saturday 21 September 2024, 2-3pm
St Luke's Anglican Church
Richmond, lutruwita/Tasmania

Join SITE: Richmond curator Jade Irvine and a number of the artists in an informative chat about the project, their processes and the finished artworks.

Exhibition continues until 6 October 2024
Opening hours: Thursday - Sunday, 11am - 4pm

Image: Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, Convergence (detail). 2024, Installation at Richmond Gaol.

Photo: Amber Koroluk-Stephenson

S.I.T.E. Richmond (Something in the Exchange)

Curated by Jade Irvine in collaboration with Clarence City Council

Various Locations, Richmond

September-October 2024

Artists: Selena de Carvalho, Eloise Daintree, George Kennedy, Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, Brigita Ozolins, Mary Scott, Nunami Sculthorpe-Green, Angus Thornett

Coined by philosopher Jacques Derrida and further popularised by cultural critic Mark Fisher, ‘Hauntology’ is a term that describes “ideas referring to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past”. This notion of Hauntology serves as a theoretical and methodological basis for S.I.T.E, a research-based project that considers the multifaceted histories of Richmond. This project presents nuanced responses to the layered complexities of place and history, through works that speak more directly about the complexities surrounding the foundation of the township in Mumirimina country.

Image: Richmond Gaol. Photo: Amber Koroluk-Stephenson

Island Magazine, Issue 171

Arts Features: Interior Topohraphies, with an essay by Briony Downes.

Cover image: Escape Artist, Portrait of an Australian Painted Lady, 2024, oil on linen, 60 x 55 cm.

Courtesy the artist and Bett Gallery

Artist Talk: Interior Topographies

Bett Gallery, nipaluna/Hobart

1pm, Saturday 2nd March 2024

Photo: Jack Bett

Interior Topographies

Bett Gallery, nipaluna/Hobart

16 February - 9 March 2024

Interior Topographies sees Amber address broader themes of femininity, domesticity, beauty and love, motivated by her own feelings of ambivalence towards the expectations and implications of motherhood, and her own autonomy while navigating personal and political aspects of gendered spaces in contemporary painting.

Photo provided

Summer Salon

Piomena Gallery, Launceston

15 February - 13 March 2024

Image: Garden’s edge, after William Gould, 2023, oil on linen, 50 x 40cm

Photo: Rosie Hastie

PressWEST LAUNCH24 exhibition

Presswest, Queenstown, lutruwita/Tasmania

26 January, 2024

PressWEST Tasmania has developed its 2024 program around a series of exchanges between professional artists, the West Coast community and a broader cohort of potential ‘cultural pilgrims’. It is doing this on the back of a successful series of workshop events at PressWEST in Queenstown during 2023.

The focus in the program is a sequence of seasonal, thematic projects designed to set in motion encounters with artistic strategies, research principles, local knowledge and heritage domains.

Image: Vanishing Point III, 2021, oil on linen, 61 x 71 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Always Tomorrow

Moonah Arts Centre, lutruwita/Tasmania

19 October - 11 November 2023

Always Tomorrow brings the work Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, David Greenhalgh, Dylan Sheridan, Julia Drouhin, Leigh Rigozzi and Lisa Sammut together to explore speculative imaginings for The Future. Presented through a cross section of painting, installation, video, and textile, this exhibition explores the possibilities and contrasting affects of hope and despair, the tangible and unknown, comedy and tragedy, dreams and nightmares, collapse and renewal, looking towards The Future where the end is not the end.

Image: Allegory for a Wishbone, 2022, oil on linen, 112 x 91 cm

Photo: Rosie Hastie

f i g m e n t - Floor talk

Lady Franklin Gallery, Lenah Valley, Lutruwita/Tasmania

Saturday, 10 June, 12-1pm.

Join artists Jo Chew and Amber Koroluk-Stephenson for a floor talk with curators Eliza Burke and Maria Kunda at the Lady Franklin Gallery to discuss their exhibition, figment,

This project was assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts. It has been kindly supported by The Art Society of Tasmania and the Lady Franklin Gallery.

Photo: Chad Cullen

Arts Tasmania - Poatina Arts Village Residency

1 - 28 March 2023

Amber Koroluk-Stephenson + Laura Purcell

This project was assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts.

Photo: provided

Finalist in tidal.22

Devonport Regional Gallery, Lutruwita / Tasmania

10 December 2022 – 28 January 2023

tidal.22: City of Devonport Tasmanian Art Award Exhibition aims to encourage contemporary practice with strength of concept, innovation, and execution of two-and three-dimensional artwork. The theme is open to a range of interpretation regarding tides and living by the water, be it personal, environmental, political or of cultural nature.

Relationships and Limitations

RANT Arts, Devonport, Lutruwita / Tasmania

2 December 2022 - 14 January 2023

Curated by Dr. Penny Burnett

Relationships and Limitations is an exploration by ten artists of the expressive language of colour, and of colour’s relational qualities.

Photo: Penny Burnett

2022 Firstdraft Auction

11 – 18 November 2022

The 2022 Firstdraft Auction goes live Friday 11 – Friday 18 November, including an on-site exhibition, as well as online browsing and bidding. This year’s auction includes 200+ artworks by 174 artists from Australia.

Image: Princess X 2, after Brancusi, 2019, oil on linen, 30.5 x 30.5cm

Photo: Robin Hearfield

The Butterfly Effect Art Auction

Piomena Gallery, Launceston

1 - 18 August 2022

The Butterfly Effect Art Auction that features over 100 local, national and international artists who have contributed artworks for the online auction with funds raised to be donated to UNICEF’s Ukraine Emergency Appeal.

Image: In the Artist’s Veil, after John Glover, 2017, oil on canvas, 35 x 30cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Finalist: Women’s Art Prize Tasmania

Touring exhibition

21 May - 29 October

Queen Victoria Museum (Launceston): Saturday 21 May 2022 - Sunday 17 July 2022; Devonport Regional Gallery (Devonport): Friday 5 August 2022 - Sunday 18 September 2022; Moonah Arts Centre (Hobart): Friday 30 September 2022 - Saturday 29 October 2022

In a simple gesture, my gloved hands wipes a detail of John Glover’s 1836 painting depicting Ben Lomond. This performed act disrupts the original, underscoring troubled questions of absence and presence, possession and dispossession, and my own position as a white female of recent migrant ancestry.

Image: White Wash I, oil on linen, 36 x 36 cm

Photo: Angela Casey

Settings for Uncertainty

Schoolhouse Gallery, Rosny Farm Arts Centre, Lutriwita/Tasmania

26 August - 18 September 2022

Kelly Austin + Amber Koroluk-Stephenson

Gallery hours: Wednesday - Sunday 11am - 5pm

Settings for Uncertainty brings together the work of Kelly Austin and Amber Koroluk-Stephenson to investigate tensions between reality and illusion. This exhibition will explore notions of suspended space between time and place, being and belonging, figuration and abstraction. Drawing on personal and collective memory to capture poetry in a fragmented world.

Photo: Rosie Hastie

A Hopeful Mirage

Bett Gallery, nipaluna/Hobart

8 - 27 July 2022

A Hopeful Mirage is a tragicomic meditation on the psychic inertia of a world in flux. Responding to events both local and international, constructed landscapes presented a new dimension of turbulence. Central to the exhibition is the paradox of optimism; a stance that can permit blind complacency or the motivation to effect change in the world.

Image: Every Great Ruin, 2022, oil on linen, 91 x 112 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Glover Prize Judge 2022

11 March 2022

Falls Park Pavilion, Evandale, Lutruwita/Tasmania

I am pleased to announce I will judging for the 2022 Glover Prize alongside Tony Ellwood AM (VIC), Director, National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), and Michael Reid OAM (NSW), Chairman & Director, Michael Reid Galleries. This trio will use their unique perspective and expertise to select the finalists and winner of this year's Glover Prize.

A Show of Strength

Bett Gallery, nipaluna/Hobart

19 February - 12 March 2022

David Keeling | Joan Ross | Nicholas Blowers | Alex Davern | Mish Meijers | Kelly Austin | Amber Koroluk-Stephenson | Neil Haddon | Valerie Sparks | Helen Wright | Michael Schlitz | Irene Briant | Tim Burns | Jane Burton | Megan Walch | Barbie Kjar | Tom O'Hern | Matt Coyle | Belinda Winkler | Caroline Rannersberger | Sue Lovegrove | Pat Brassington | Robert O'Connor | Philip Wolfhagen

Image: Split Vision, after John Glover and Hilma af Klint I, 2021, oil on linen, 91 x 112cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Art for Afghanistan Fundraiser

24 Tasman St, North Hobart

11 September 2021

Art for Afghanistan is a fundraiser event put together for the Care.org and Tasmanian Refugee Legal Service Afghanistan appeals, in aid of the recent Taliban takeover. The fundraiser will involve a silent art auction, music by local bands, tasty snacks from the beautiful Afghan ladies at the Migrant resource centre and yummy refreshments. All proceeds will go to The Migrant Resource Centre, Tasmania Refugee Legal Service and Care Australia.

https://www.care.org.au/appeals/afghanistan/

https://www.trls.org.au/

Photo: Angela Casey

2021 Firstdraft Auction

13-22 August 2021

Online Fundraiser

The Firstdraft Auction is returning online, bigger (and safer) than ever. Our annual fundraiser is a time to come together and celebrate artists supporting artists. When you buy an artwork at the Firstdraft Auction, half of the sale helps us pay fees to every artist who participates in our program, while the other half is paid as commission to the artist who donated it. Put simply, 100% of your money goes back to artists. This year I’ve donated two works from Breaking Horizons series.

Images: Encounter I, after Hilma af Klint (left), Encounter II, after Hilma af Klint (right), both panels: 2020, oil on linen, 35 x 35cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Split Vision, Closing Event

2 May 2021, 2 - 4 pm

Glover Country, Deddington

You are warmly invited to attend the closing event of my solo exhibition, Split Vision, at Glover Country. Join me for an artist talk at 2:30pm. Refreshments will be provided.

Please RSVP by Friday 30 April 2021
Email: carol@glovercountry.com.au

Photo: Angela Casey

Disappearing

Curated by Carol Bett, Gerard Castles and Pete Hay

Bett Gallery, nipaluna/Hobart

12 March - 3 April 2021

Disappearing : to cease to be seen; vanish from sight; to cease to exist or be known; pass away; end gradually.

In our islands, their past, the land, seas, the movement of air, its peoples, the cadence of life and in the place itself is something unfathomably beautiful. You sense it as much as see it. It’s about connection and time not the here and now. It’s a secret that has been closely held, cherished, sustaining our soul.

Entwined with that secret has been a hope that one day Tasmania would be recognised, acknowledged and able to stand on its own two feet. This has been elusive but now we are told that perhaps it is so close as to be reckoned by the beads on the accountant’s abacus.

Then again, perhaps not. Is the price we are paying a disappearing, a disappearing of the very stuff that sustains us? Or, is it a more complex story, shedding a skin as part of the inexorable march of renewal?

Disappearing.

Image: Vanishing Point I, 2021, oil on linen, 61 x 71 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Constance Cache Fundraiser

3 December 2020 - 28 February 2021

Constance Cache supports artists supporting artists. All proceeds go to local artists, Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation and the ongoing operations of Constance ARI.

The first wave of artists includes Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, Priscilla Beck, Bella Dower, Harrison Bowe, George Kennedy, Gabbee Stolp, Laura Gillam, Phoebe Beard, Adrian Bradbury, Julia Drouhin, Caitlin Fargher, Liam James, Nadege Philippe-Janon + Georgia Morgan

https://constanceari.org

https://www.firesticks.org.au

2020 Firstdraft Auction

17 - 27 September 2020

For the first time in its 11-year history, the Firstdraft Auction will be hosted entirely online. Our annual fundraiser is a time to come together (virtually) and celebrate artists supporting artists. In recognition of the collective hardships we've experienced as a community, Firstdraft has doubled artist commissions to 50%. When you buy an artwork at the Firstdraft Auction, half of the sale will pay artists fees and keep our exhibitions rent-free, while the other half goes directly into the pocket of the artist who donated it. Put simply, 100% of your money goes back to artists.

Image: Scoop, 2019, oil on linen, 30 x 30 cm

Photo: Angela Casey

Breaking Horizons

Bett Gallery, nipaluna/Hobart

1 - 22 August 2020

Breaking Horizons represents the development of Koroluk-Stephenson’s work following her Glover residency and a continuation of her ideas about the legacy of European perspectives within contemporary Australian painting. Employing an eclectic cast of objects, native and non-native flora, landscape imagery, domestic props and reproduced artworks, she explores the illusory nature of painting itself as a critique of both coloniality and the European gaze. Through a series of fragmented landscape ‘backdrops’, Breaking Horizons takes aim at the horizon line as a traditionally European measure of perspective, dismantling its assumptions of the centred subject, continuity of place and uninterrupted views of the world. By assembling landscapes with multiple suns, moons, strips of shoreline, fragmented trees, and broken horizon lines, Koroluk-Stephenson presents place as a construction, carefully arranging her objects and viewpoints to create a seductive veneer that is both inviting and strange. Highlighting the horizon as a visual construct, the exhibition seeks out new tension points within conventional systems of perspective, dismantling old structures and breaking through to new ways of seeing.

Image: Echo, 2020, oil on linen, 112 x 137 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Arts Tasmania Residency at Glover Country

1-28 May 2020

During this residency I will respond to the history and site of John Glover’s former estate, Patterdale farm, where I will draw on the colonial artists’s legacy through contemporary interpretations of landscape. This project is concerned with ways painting ‘stages’ landscape in particular ways, creating illusions of grandeur within traditions of the picturesque, and ways I can manipulate these traditions in an effort to reorient the painted landscape.

This project was assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts.

Ravenswood Women’s Art Prize, Winners Exhibition

Centenary Centre, Ravenswood School for Girls, Gordon

13 February 2020, 6 - 8pm

You are invited to a viewing of works by Angela Tiatia (2018 Professional Artist Winner) and Amber Koroluk-Stephenson (2018 Emerging Artist Winner).

Image: Green room I, 2019, oil on linen, 81 x 71 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Kings Artist Run, Naarn / Melbourne

11 January - 1 February 2020

Artists: Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, Eloise Kirk, Jelena Telecki, Lisa Sammut, Nicola Smith.

Playing on the filmic storytelling technique used to set apart brief interludes from the main story, this exhibition makes reference to theatre, cinema, surrealism, the familiar and unknown to explore slippages between reality and fantasy within spaces where these distinctions remain ambiguous.

Dream Sequence investigates thresholds and comprehension of dreams, to explore suspension between time and place, being and belonging, form and presentation, figuration and abstraction, internal and external. This exhibition aims to capture the potency and poetry in fragmented states of meaning and understanding through equivocal visual dialogs represented through personal and collective memory, gesture, intimacy and immediacy.

This project was assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts.

Photo: Lisa Sammut

would move me more than glitter

Good Grief, nipaluna/Hobart

18 October - 9 November 2019

Artists: Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, Nadege Phillipe-Janon, Priscilla S. Beck, Liam James

would move me more than glitter examines interpretations of the artist’s muse. This exhibition aims to capture potency and poetry of the muse, examining interplays between figuration and abstraction, desires and devotion, sexuality and objectification, public and private, intimacy and immediacy, substance and futility.

Photo: Rosie Hastie

The flower show: birth, death and everything in between

Academy Gallery, University of Tasmania, Launceston

21 September - 25 October 2019

Curated by Dr. Malcom Bywaters + Dr. Kim Lehman

Artists: Les Blakebrough | Angela Casey | Fiona Chipperfield | Susannah Coleman-Brown | John Derrick | Jennifer Dickens | Leoni Duff | Kylie Elkington | Marian Hosking | Amber Koroluk-Stephenson | Janet Laurence | Deborah Malor | Paul Murphy | Isabella von Lichtan

The flower show – birth, death and everything in between is presented in partnership with Blooming Tasmania and the University Cultural Collections.

Image: Blush, after Anne MacDonald, Georgia O’Keeffe and Hannah Wilke, 2019, oil on linen, 71 x 61 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Sydney Contemporary

Carriageworks, Gadigal Land

12 - 15 September 2019

Curated by Georgia Hobbs

For the 2019 Sydney Contemporary, Georgia Hobbs has curated my into the Art Money booth, showing alongside Jon Campbell, Genevieve Felix Reynolds, Rob McHaffie, Anna Pogossova, Madeline Preston, among others.

Image: Softening into Darkness, 2017, oil on linen, 71 x 86 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

On Belonging(s)

Devonport Regional Gallery, lutwiwita / Tasmania

3 August - 22 September 2019

Curated by Erin Wilson

Artists: Jessie Pangas, Liam James, Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, Alex Davern

The artists in this exhibition On Belonging(s) explore different aspects of both notions of belonging and belongings. Together, these artists explore how we attach value to objects, and the role these possessions play in the stories we tell about ourselves, both individually and communally. On Belonging(s) is a reflection on how we construct our identity, connect ourselves to place, and engage with our possessions, both nostalgically and idealistically, as extensions of the self.

Image: As above, so below, 2019, oil on linen, diptych (back view, free standing double sided screen), 205 x 155 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Because Everyone Sleeps

Sawtooth, kanamaluka / Launceston

7 - 29 June 2019

Curated by Ciara O’Meara

Sleep is a platform for dreams and lends itself as a window into an altered reality. Dreams exist in a subjective realm, although in the context of cultural practice the manifestation and content of a dream can be perceived in a myriad of ways.

Image: Fracture, 2017, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm

Photo: Angela Casey

Finalist: Women’s Art Prize Tasmania

12 March - 4 August 2019

Touring exhibition:

Academy Gallery (Launceston: 12 March – 5 April; Makers’ Space (Burnie): 18 April – 2 June; Rosny Barn; 18 July – 4 August

Congratulations to all the other finalists and winners.

Image: Nearness of Distance, 2018, oil on linen, 152 x 224 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Middle Ground

Bett Gallery, nipaluna/Hobart

18 October - 10 November 2018

Photo: Rosie Hastie

Wild: Flora and Fauna in Australian Art

Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, New South Wales

20 July - 2 September 2018

Curated by Diana Robson

Narelle Autio, Arthur Boyd, Dallas Bray, Sam Byrne, Peter Cooley, Julia deVille, Pippin Drysdale, Troy Emery, Cathy Franzi, Hayden Fowler, Jody Graham, Elioth Gruner, Fiona Hall, Fiona Hiscock, Shaun Gladwell, Petrina Hicks, Martin King, Kaltjiti Collaborative, Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, Sue Kneebone, Joseph Lycett, Jennie Kamarare, Martinello Lily, Lion Kngwarrey, Emily Kame, Kngwarreye Joseph McGlennon Danie Mellor, Noel McKenna, Jeff Minchin, Tom Moore, Albert Namatjira, Charmaine Brown Napurrula John Olsen, Christopher Pease, Gloria Petyarre, William Pidgeon, Margaret Preston, Kate Rohde, Derek Jungarrayi Thompson, Angela Valamanesh, Louise Weaver

Image: Paradise Dreaming, 2015, various media - oil on canvas & plywood, artificial turf, framing timber, gardening gloves, garden hose, plastic cups, cushions, sun chairs, artificial plants, dimensions variable.

2018 Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize

Winner, Emerging Artist Prize

15 June 2018

The 2018 Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize Professional Artist Prize of $35,000 has been won by Sydney artist, Angela Tiatia for her digital work, ‘The Fall’, a masterful video work which deals with the collapse of society during wartime. Amber Koroluk-Stephenson, a painter from Hobart has won the Emerging Artist's Prize of $5,000 for her intriguing and beautifully painted work, ‘Marooned’, resembling in part a traditional colonial landscape with a curious insertion.

Image: From left: Anne Johnstone (Ravenswood Principal), Angela Tiatia (Professional Artist Winner), Edwina Palmer (Judge and Ravenswood Coordinator of Visual Arts), Amber Koroluk-Stephenson (Emerging Artist Winner) and Mark Steinert (Chairman Ravenswood Foundation). Image provided by Ravenswood School for Girls.

Image: Ravenswood School for Girls

Finalist, 2018 Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize

Opening Night on 15 June

Ravenswood, Henry Street, Gordon

Very pleased to be a Finalist in 2018 The Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize amongst . This is an annual acquisitive prize that was launched in 2017 to advance art and opportunity for emerging and established women artists in Australia. It is the highest value professional artist prize for women in Australia.

Congratulations to all the other finalists.

Image: Marooned, 2017, oil on canvas, 84 x 102 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Finalist, 2018 Albany Art Prize

Opening Night Albany Town Hall, Western Australia

30 March - 6 May 2018

Very pleased to be a Finalist in 2018 Albany Art prize. Entering its 10th year in 2018, The City of Albany Art Prize continues to play an important role in the cultural and economic development of the Great Southern region. The Prize is integral to the ongoing development of the City’s already sizeable Art Collection via the major acquisitive prize, which is sponsored by The Jack Family Charitable Trust. Congratulations to all the other finalists.

Image: Under this Paper Moon, 2017, oil on linen, 84 x 101cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Suburbia 

Cement Fondu, Gadigal land / Sydney

15 March - 29 April 2018

Curated by Megan Monte + Josephine Skinner

Cement Fondu's inaugural group exhibition, Suburbia, including work by Daata Editions with Ed Fornieles, Rosie Deacon, Chris Dolman, Caroline Garcia, Tina Havelock Stephens, Biljana Janice, Amber Koroluk-Stephensen, Kenny Pittock, Thom Roberts and Daniel Kim, Studio A with Emily Crockford, Shahmen Suku, Sweatshop Western Sydney Literacy Movement, Tangentyere Artists: Nerine Tilmouth; Louise Daniels; and Elizabeth Namptitjinpa, Gary Trinh, Amalia Ulman, and Paul Yore.

This project was assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts.

Photo: Document Photography

Finalist, Churchie Emerging Art Award

QUT Museum, Brisbane

12 November - 17 December 2017

Very pleased to be a Finalist in Churchie Emerging Art Award 2017 with three works from my Soft Savage series, resulting from a recent Studio Residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris. Using spontaneous gesture and familiar domestic objects within a contained environment, these works draw parallels between the wilderness and depictions of the natural world in historical artistic and scientific contexts whereby nature is presented as spectacle in a settings that stand between worlds. These works explore definitions and understandings of the exotic, by playing on the parallels between wild and the tame, natural and artificial, interior and exterior, civilised and non-civilised, the familiar and the unknown. This work attempts to reconnect with the magic and romanticism of the Age of Discovery to fulfil the human desire to connect with nature and make visible what is out of sight.

Photo: Carl Warner

Shadows on the Wall

Anna Pappas Gallery, Naarn / Melbourne

1 November – 2 December 2017

Painting becomes akin to staging, where bodies and buildings together in an indeterminate environment, an alternate world in which geographical distinctions of place are troubled, confounded, remade and rearticulated.

Image: Standing Still, 2017, oil on linen, 84 x 101 cm

Photo: Jack Bett

Finalist, Portia Geach Memorial Award

S.H Ervin Gallery, Gadigal Land/Sydney

4 November - 16 December 2017

First awarded in 1965, The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established by Florence Kate Geach in memory of her sister, artist Portia Geach. As per the direction of the will, the Award is annually presented to an Australian female artist for the best portrait painted from life of a man or woman distinguished in art, letters or the sciences. Geach was widely acclaimed as a leading artist and was a frequent commentator in the national media – making her an iconic figure in the Australian arts community. The Portia Geach Memorial Award is given by Perpetual as trustee, to the entry with the highest artistic merit.

Image: Two Sided Self, 2026, oil on canvas, 91.5 x 76cm

Photo: Jack Bett