Join us for the Opening event at ANCA Gallery on Saturday 18 May at 2.00pm

Surface Tension by Sally Clarke and Brenda Factor runs from Wednesday 15 May to Sunday 2 June 2024.

A seashell collection that has remained packed for over 40 years provided a starting point for artists, Sally Clarke and Brenda Factor, to connect ideas around materiality, memory, place, beauty, value, desire, abstraction, symbolism and the ethics of collecting from nature.

Focusing on creating meaning through making, using a combination of found materials and objects as well as traditional art-making materials, the artists have produced paintings, moving images, sculptures, noisy shells and jewellery.

For both artists, who share a life and studio in Mittagong, the work is process-based—allowing one idea to be the catalyst for the next.

For Clarke, this exhibition marks the beginning of an ongoing project where methods or even rituals of processing, interpreting and reinventing become steps toward returning the shells to their various ecological or cultural origins. Mining representations of shells in art history with references to female art icons, such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo, Clarke draws on her long-held understandings of the life & structure of molluscs to create abstracted forms.

Brenda Factor’s wearable enamels resemble the shiny desirous surface of cowrie shells imbued with notes of abstraction, as well as the beach-worn, weathered surfaces of broken shells that are part of the marine shore ecology. In the process, Factor thinks about the ways in which shells have been valued throughout history.

Join us for the Opening event at ANCA Gallery on Wednesday 5 June at 5.30pm

Relinquishing control by Jacklyn Peters and Tamsin McLure runs from Wednesday 5 June to Sunday 23 June 2024.

This exhibition explores the relinquishing of control in the creative process through paintings and drawings that build on the Process Art movement of the 1960s and 70s. The works are introspective and speculative, concerned with the artist’s willingness to create work without knowing what the end will be and to take each decision as it comes.

The tally mark is used by Peters as a key motif to represent time in her work. To read these works, the viewer is asked to imagine each mark as a footstep the artist has taken, a step that captures a specific moment in time, whether slow or fast, calm or agitated. In nature, the effects of wind and rain remove matter to create new forms. Peters’ process is a kind of reverse erosion. The application of marks and brushstrokes is built to create forms that capture emotions felt and thoughts imagined, embedding them firmly and permanently in line, shape, colour and light.

At no point in the process is it known where the artwork will end since the marks first applied determine the placement of the following marks. Process based art is about both the process and the product. It requires a level of trust in one’s own experience, though one must also relinquish control to acknowledge that in the end what will happen will happen.

McLure is concerned with our sources of identity and security, and the necessity for relinquishing control to play—without fear of failure. The work is begun without a clear end in mind; the creative process is a journey of experimentation and exploration. McLure makes a deliberate choice to work with what is already there, often recycling or redeeming discarded materials. Faces are a repeated motif, speaking to the act of identity creation through our choices, moment by moment.

While fear of failure can be stagnating and paralysing, the artists in this exhibition embrace the security of trusting the process they follow, finding the freedom to create uninhibited works.

Join the artists in a workshop, Saturday 8 June 2–4pm

Playing without fear of failure—A workshop in oil pastels

A fun and relaxed art workshop, open to the community, in which participants will have the opportunity to make an abstract drawing with oil pastels on an already painted surface.

We will begin with a general discussion about what fears inhibit us from playing with new ideas or processes when creating work, and what we consider success or completion to look like. Next, we will put some of our discussion into practise as we use oil pastels, often considered a childish medium, to play with colour and pattern, over an existing surface. We will be able to reflect on how we make decisions in the art making process and in the rest of our lives, in a welcoming and informal environment.

Join the artists in a second workshop, Saturday 15 June 2–4pm

A warm and relaxed art workshop open to the community, in which participants will have the opportunity to learn to create portraits from a single line drawing, and to turn these into wearable art.

We will begin with a general discussion about how we see our identity and how we can represent or encapsulate aspects of our identity through Visual Art. Next, we will put some of our discussion into practise as we learn to simplify a portrait into a single line drawing. We will do this over the top of existing watercolours to add mood and vibrancy to our artworks. Finally, we will turn our drawings into pins that we can wear, using recycled materials.

Flames of Culture: First Nations Jewellery Unveiled will showcase a collection of contemporary Indigenous inspired jewellery pieces that can be worn by anyone, with each piece telling a unique cultural story. The unveiling of the new jewellery collection designed and curated by local Jeweller, Thomas Coen Bonson, will be hosted at the ANCA Gallery in Canberra during NAIDOC Week. Embracing this year's theme, ‘Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud’, we celebrate Indigenous heritage with passion and pride.

The exhibition is open 12–5pm from Wednesday 10 July to Friday 12 July.

According to the artist: ‘The Aboriginal fish trap is a cultural practice that spans over 20,000 years and provides healthy and fresh fish for communities in a sustainable and ecofriendly way. My father has dedicated his whole life to re-designing the traditional Aboriginal fish trap into a contemporary form, combining cultural ancient techniques with modern practices to ensure the continuation of this ancestral tradition which has been passed through our family and culture for generations.

Mantiyupwi honours my culture, my father and the fish traps he has built. Mantiyupwi is inspired by the fish trap my father and I built together on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory. Over the first three days of building it, it caught over 1500kgs of fish, feeding the whole community.

The fish trap is built on Wurrumiyanga, an Aboriginal community on the Tiwi Islands. The Traditional Owners of Wurrumiyanga are the Mantiyupwi Clan. I have dedicated the name of the piece to them.

Mantiyupwi carries profound symbolism. It represents the essential role of family and community in Aboriginal culture, where the fish trap is not only a tool for sustenance but also a symbol of unity, cooperation, and intergenerational knowledge transfer.

I am proud to honour the true skill and craftmanship of handmade jewellery making. Just like my father, I have intertwined two powerful heritage narratives, uniting the traditions of the ancient Aboriginal fish trap and our culture through contemporary handmade jewellery.’

Thomas Coen Bonson