Elesa Stellios
Emily Burgess-Orton
Janet Jeffs
Nina Casey-Brown
Elesa Stellios, CLICK HERE for salvation!, 2026, digital application, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist.
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.