OPENING EVENT Wednesday 28 July from 6:00pm at ANCA Gallery. Free to attend, no bookings required.

Domestic Disturbance explores the traumatic effects of domestic abuse and the failure of government agencies to provide adequate assistance to those impacted by it. Through the development of an architectural embodied space the artist brings her personal ‘lived experience’ through art into the public realm. This exhibition aims to bring public attention to domestic abuse and its prevalence in our community. During 2020 there has been an international increase in reported domestic abuse due to Covid-19 regulations of isolating in the home. This issue needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

Keziah Craven

OPENING EVENT Wednesday 5 May from 6:00pm at ANCA Gallery. Free to attend, no bookings required.

One or Two Paintings is the premise of the exhibition at ANCA by Peter Alwast, Joel Arthur, Riley Beaumont, Rowan Kane and Dionisia Salas, each displaying one or two recent works. Each artist is a current ANCA studio resident and because of their close proximity, underscored by the lockdowns over 2020, a deeper conversation about their processes of painting lead to this show. Exhibiting one or two of their recent works together allows the chance to generate a visual discussion of ideas between them as painters to be presented to a broader audience.

The foremost conversation between their paintings is the abstraction of subject, the honed attention to surface, and each individual’s material delivery and sensibility. Figuration and subject dips in and out of focus for each artist and what stands as the resounding concern is the treatment of the surface and the subversion of description in one mode or another. All have their own logic systems which are continually undone and found again in the process of image making.

Peter Alwast is currently the Head of Painting at The ANU School of Art and Design. He holds a Masters of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design in New York and received his PhD in 2018 at Art and Design UNSW, Sydney.  

Joel Arthur graduated from ANU School of Art with a Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours in painting in 2014. He has been held in numerous shows in Canberra and interstate including galleries such as Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Watters Gallery, Brenda May and Drill Hall Gallery. His work is held in collections such as the ANU, Bradley Allen Love, James and Jacqui Erskine and KPMG.

Riley Beaumont graduated from ANU School of Art with a Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours in painting in 2016. His work is exhibited regularly in Canberra and interstate and is held in numerous collections throughout Australia, United States, and China. He is represented by TWFineArt. 

Rowan Kane graduated from the ANU School of Art with a Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours in painting in 2015. His work celebrates kitch and cynically critiques the human condition through provocative narratives, psychological landscapes, and themes of love and loss. He has exhibited throughout Canberra and New South Wales and his work is held in private collections in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Los Angeles.

Dionisia Salas spent her early life living in Alice Springs, Dubbo, Botswana and Newcastle before arriving in Canberra to study at the ANU School of Art and Design, graduating in 2007. Salas’ recent exhibitions include Pavillion am Milchof in Berlin, Sutton Gallery in Melbourne, Watters Gallery in Sydney, and numerous exhibitions in Canberra.

Joel Arthur | Peter Alwast | Riley Beaumont | Rowan Kane | Dionisia Salas

OPENING EVENT Wednesday 7 April from 6:00pm at ANCA Gallery. Free to attend, no bookings required.

‘Unthinkable Fields’ cumulates the works of Katy B Plummer, Eloise Kirk, Lauren Brincat, Sarah Mosca, Clare Thackway and Lottie Consalvo. Working across a variety of mediums including performance, installation, photography and painting this exhibition will aim to straddle the periphery between the non-human world and domestic landscapes, seeking to form uncanny pathways between the artists various interpretations of the monumental and the miniature, memory and space, personal histories and accumulated narratives in relation to the world outside and beyond us. 

Through gesture and materiality this group of artists will contemplate the relationship between the precious, the precarious and the unfamiliar. Navigating both a deeply personal and collective understanding of the outside world through the exploration of materials, gestures and objects-both hard and soft, the paths we tread both close to home and in unfamiliar territory as well as the forms we surround ourselves with and shroud ourselves in.

The exhibition will explore and develop a shifting conversation between the constructed object, representation and the fluidity of space, the mysterious relationship between geography and the imagination, the personal interactions with the world around us and without us. 

Katy B Plummer (she/her) is an artist living and working on stolen land intersecting Garigal to the north, Darramurragal to the west and Gayamaygal to the South. She has a BFA from UNSW and and MFA from the School of Visual Art in New York. She is interested in ghosts, cinematic storytelling, anachronistic textile practices and high school theatre aesthetics. 

Eloise Kirk (she/her) is an artist living and working in Nipaluna, Lutruwita (Hobart, Tasmania) She completed an MFA at Sydney College of the Arts in 2013 and exhibits regularly in Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney. She is represented by Gallery 9, in Darlinghurst.

Lauren Brincat completed a Master of Visual Arts at the Sydney College of the Arts in 2006. She was awarded the Australia Council for the Arts Emerging Artist Creative Australia Fellowship in 2012-2014 and the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship in 2009. Brincat has exhibited widely across Australia.

Sarah Mosca lives and works in Sydney, Australia.  Drawn to epic and historical tales recounting human will, sorrow and optimism her practice responds to both theoretical texts and pursuits of optimism.

Clare Thackway, born 1984 Canberra (Aus), Lives and works between Sydney (Aus) and Paris (Fr) Thackway is interested in the ways we perform and move our bodies through spaces both literal and emotional. Thackway holds a Bachelor of Arts – Visual Painting from the Australian National University and in 2006 she graduated from the National Art School Sydney with Honours in Fine Art Painting.

Lottie Consalvo is a Melbourne-born, Newcastle-based artist whose practice traverses painting, performance, video and sculpture. She creates commanding, gestural works that explore psychological shifts and ideas surrounding longing, desire and the unknown.

Katy B Plummer | Eloise Kirk | Lauren Brincat | Sarah Mosca | Clare Thackway | Lottie Consalvo

OPENING EVENT Wednesday 24 February from 6:00pm at ANCA Gallery. Free to attend, no bookings required.

Supernatural Light Affinity is an exhibition that proposes abstraction, enigmatic symbolism and magical luminescence are legitimate agents for inspiring curiosity and wonder. Yvette Hamilton, Ali Noble, Lisa Sammut and Helen Shelley bring together photography, sculpture, painting, textiles and light projection to materialise works that consider their often unknowable inner and outer worlds. From the unconscious to deep space, ‘not knowing’ is an enchanted terrain to be explored through various materials and idiosyncratic visual languages developed by each artist. 

The artists share a collective veneration for their internal and external worlds in Supernatural Light Affinity. These artists are brought together by a desire to harness a sense of the unintelligible and supernatural, through works that consider light, reflectivity, and sensualilty. Their combined artistic chemistry asks that we reinstate the poetic; that inspiring awe is a valid political and personal strategy. It feels unfashionable or naïve to conjure optimism, but perhaps collaboration, cooperation and glitter are a means to resistance and endurance.

For Ali Noble, her textile wall hangings and steel sculptures offer alchemic possibilities: whereby cutting, gluing and construction invite reinvention, renewal, and re-presentation of reality. Ali has exhibited in solo and group exhibtions throughout Australia. In 2020, she was included in a Sydney Morning Herald feature “Innovative textile art smashing its way  into our art galleries” by Chloe Wolifson.  

Yvette Hamilton works across photomedia, video installation and interactivity. Her interdisciplinary practice creates work that takes an exploratory approach to visuality and presence. Recently she has been a finalist in the Grace Cossington Smith Award, the Paramor Prize, the Josephine Ulrick & Winn Schubert Award, the Fishers Ghost Art Prize, and the Meroogal Women’s Art Prize. She has been the recipient of an Australia Council Artstart grant, and was the Sydney College of the Arts winner of the Dominik Mersch Gallery Award.

Helen Shelley lives and works in Sydney. Shelley graduated from the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University with first class honours. In 2015 she graduated from Sydney College of the Arts with a Masters Degree in Painting. She has held solo exhibitions at Grant Pirrie, Flinders Street Gallery, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Galerie pompom and has been included in exhibitions at First Draft Gallery, Casula Powerhouse, Rubicon Ari and James Makin Gallery. Shelley has been a finalist in the Churchie and most recently the Blake Prize. Her mixed media painting practice is concerned with developing personal rituals that bring to mind and honour late loved ones, along with capturing moments of the sublime and transcendental as observed in the everyday.

Lisa Sammut’s practice encompasses sculpture, light, video and installation. She has exhibited widely in Australia, undertaking several recent large-scale projects at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney (2019) and Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth (2019). In 2018, Sammut was a finalist in the John Fries Award, a resident at Parramatta Artist Studios and completed her MFA by Research at UNSW Art & Design. In 2019, Sammut attended studio residency programs in Iceland and France.

yvettehamilton.com | alinoble.com | helenshelley.com | lisasammut.com

Exhibition supported by

OPENING EVENT Wednesday 27 January from 6:00pm at ANCA Gallery. Free to attend, no bookings required.

Jamieson and McGinness’ project explores the boundary between mediums and art practices. They want to combine their practices of ceramics, a typically domestic medium, and painting, a traditionally two dimensional medium, to create a sculptural installation. Through multiple holes in sculptural pinched ceramic objects, Jamieson works to break down the dichotomy between the interior and exterior space of the vessel. This allows the audience an opportunity to reflect on the barriers that are held between their inner and outer selves. McGinness’ textural paintings on the ceramic forms will play with the audience’s perception creating illusions of where the forms start and finish. By creating intrigue she will entice the viewer for a closer look, encouraging spatial and bodily engagement.

This collaboration challenges the stigmas of what painting and ceramics should be. Ceramics places painting into three dimensional space. Where a painter needs to view space differently to what they’re used to. By using paint as the surface treatment on the ceramic wares it opens up new opportunities that are not traditionally accepted in the craft field. As well as combining mediums, this work will offer an opportunity for viewers to reflect on the relationship between the natural and the artificial. The organic forms and the materiality of the clay are contrasted with the man made paints applied to the surface in an artificial landscape.

Abbey Jamieson is a Canberra based artist who works predominantly with clay. Through the processes of pinching and soda firing she creates ceramic objects with themes of comfort and connection. Jamieson utilises the soda firing process as she enjoys allowing the kiln to become an active participant in her work. This creates a contrast between the slow, controlled pinching of clay, and the dynamic, spontaneous nature of soda firing.  Jamieson spent a semester abroad in Canada and in 2018 she graduated from the Australian National University with a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours), majoring in Ceramics.

Rowan McGinness is a painter who focuses on how tactility and spatial engagement open up possibilities for making paintings. She enjoys blurring the boundaries of painting by merging with other artistic mediums such as textiles and sculpture. She graduated with Honours from the Australian National University School of Art and Design in 2018. She won awards at her Graduating Exhibition through the Emerging Artist Support Scheme (EASS), including an acquisition award and an exhibition award at Alliance Français. She has showed in exhibition spaces at the ANU School of Art and Design Gallery, Alliance Français, Strathnairn Gallery and Tributary Projects.

abbeyjamieson.com | rowanmcginness.com.au