Fatima Killeen

CRITICAL DATES
OPENING EVENT: 1 May 6–8pm
ON VIEW: 1–24 May
GALLERY HOURS: Fri–Sun 11–4pm

Western nations have always created industries for the benefit of their own economies. They continue to use harmful chemicals to grow toxic farm produce, invest in the production of weapons or actively dump piles of fast fashion throwaways into the landfill of developing countries under the name of “International aid relief”. 

These practises create massive environmental devastation by leaving behind contaminated soil and waterways, as well as divided communities. Most of the people in these communities are engulfed in civil violence and economic uncertainty. They are left on their own to bear the brunt of conflict and have no basic human rights, nor the opportunities to make their lives better. They are also the ones who suffer the enormous effects of climate change and unbearable predicaments.

Unfortunately, from the western point-of-view, this is the price of progress at the mercy of powerful nations. Their addiction to profiteering hinders finding solutions to the decline of the environment - nature to them is a source to be exploited. The on-going campaigns of green washing manipulate people and stand in the way of any realistic resolve to adapt to the climate crisis and the looming danger we will face following the denial of our obligations to care for the environment.  

Lands of countries in zones of conflict and overlong occupation have sadly become the testing ground for the paraphernalia of modern warfare leaving behind contaminated military landfill. The need to work collectively in facing up to the imminent crisis has become even more urgent. We need to co-exist and connect with nature in finding solutions to our environmental dilemma - we are part of the same organism that is breathing life into us. 

Fatima Killeen was born in Casablanca and studied at Les Beaux Arts in Morocco and Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC. Killeen moved to Australia in 1994, undertaking a bachelor of Fine Arts at ANU in printmaking and drawing and graduated with First Class Honours in 1997. 

Killeen was awarded the Wattan Art Prize at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney (2001), National African Australian Award for Professional Excellence (2015&2016), International Honour Award for Moroccan Art & Culture (2017), Kenitra and the Australian Muslim Artists Art Prize (2021).

Image:

Fatima Killeen, We are what we grow, 2023, collograph on paper, 850x600mm

Elesa Stellios
Emily Burgess-Orton
Janet Jeffs
Nina Casey-Brown

Critical dates
EXHIBITION OPENING: 10 APRIL 6–8pm
ON VIEW: 10-26 aPRIL
Gallery HOurs: fri–sun 11–4pm

Soft Expose looks at the connections between the body, perception, the experience of the sublime and a speculative future saturated by new technologies. Bringing together the practices of Emily Burgess-Orton, Nina Casey-Brown, Janet Jeffs and Elesa Stellios, their work moves us between encounters with vulnerabilities, distortions of the self and imaginings of realities just beyond the horizon. These works also recognise the ambivalent nature of human experiences, offering cues for rest, interaction, pleasure and new forms of intimacy.

Working across ceramic, textile, glass, painting, installation and interactive media, each artist approaches perception differently. Emily Burgess-Orton’s large-scale ceramic forms rest within domestic settings, their creased and weighted surfaces tracing the contours of bodies that resist repair. Nina Casey-Brown’s hand-silvered and blown glass mirrors bend and blur the act of looking. Halos and repeated circular forms catch and release light, fragmenting the viewer and unsettling the promise of a perfect reflection. Janet Jeffs moves between iridescent membranes and heavily layered, rust-toned canvases. Light filters through translucent films and gestures across rough surfaces, creating atmospheres that oscillate between the ethereal and the grounded. In contrast, Elesa Stellios adopts the language of commercial services, inviting audiences to sit, watch, participate and buy in. Borrowing from the visual grammar of advertising and persuasion, her installation stages encounters with technologies that promise transcendence while quietly shaping how we see and are seen.

Together, the works do not offer clarity. Instead, they create spaces where perception is slowed and unsettled. Light glances from surface to surface, from glass to glaze, from screen to skin, drawing connections between material bodies and mediated futures. In this movement, exposure is not simply revelation. It is a condition of being present with distortion, with pleasure, and with the shifting boundaries between the intimate and the infinite.

These artists were chosen from the ANU School Art & Design 2025 Graduating Exhibition as part of the Emerging Artist Support Scheme (EASS).

Curated by Grace Blake and Julia Mendel.