2020 National Works on Paper by MPRG

2020

Mornington Peninsula Shire acknowledges and pays respect to the Bunurong / BoonWurrung people, the traditional custodians of these lands and waters.

Cover: Laith McGregor, Ode 2020 (detail), pencil on paper, Courtesy of the artist and STATION, Melbourne 2

FOREWORD Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery’s National Works on Paper (NWOP) prize is one of the most prestigious awards and exhibitions in Australia, attracting leading contemporary artists from across Australia working in the fields of drawing, printmaking, collage, animation, digital prints and paper sculpture. National Works on Paper evolved out of the Gallery’s Spring Festival of Drawing and Prints Acquisitive prizes which began in 1973 and 1974, respectively, and presents a survey of contemporary art making that celebrates the medium of paper in all its different forms. Close to 1200 artists from all corners of Australia submitted entries for this year’s National Works on Paper prize, and seventy-four works were selected by the judging panel that included Louise Tegart, Director, Art Gallery of Ballarat; Gina Mobayed, Director, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery and Danny Lacy, Artistic Director / Senior Curator, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. The finalists’ work selected capture both traditional approaches to working with paper, alongside works that incorporate new technologies, pushing the boundaries of the medium and expanding our appreciation of what working with and on paper can be. The Mornington Peninsula Shire has provided important funding for this acclaimed award since the award’s inception, and we thank the Friends of Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery for their passionate and ongoing support in enabling the growth and development of the MPRG collection through the acquisition of key artworks. Congratulations to all the finalists who inspire us with their creativity and the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery team for delivering this wonderful exhibition at the end of a unique and challenging year. John Baker Mornington Peninsula Shire CEO

INTRODUCTION Drawing is the first language of the human being before writing. It’s a transcription of how the human being sees reality, not reality itself. Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-born French graphic novelist, artist and film director

As young children, our first form of communication is often through drawing. Pencil in hand, or sticks in the sand, we create marks, symbols and forms that express creativity and understanding of our surrounding world. As we begin to experiment on paper, our marks express and share a language of creativity. Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery’s biennial National Works on Paper (NWOP), launched in the fifty-year anniversary of the Gallery, exhibits exceptional works on paper that convey creativity and commentary on our contemporary world. And what a year to provide commentary. The keystone NWOP acquisitive exhibition has been achieved through unprecedented times. More than ever we need artists to guide us to celebrate, challenge and understand our changing world. Congratulations to the MPRG team and judges for selecting a rich, diverse and fascinating collection of contemporary works that include printmaking, sculpture, photography, digital art and drawing. With a record number of entries received by leading Australian artists, the process of selection was an intense effort for all involved, and the result is to be commended. The ongoing support of Mornington Peninsula Shire is acknowledged, as is the generous support from the Friends of MPRG. Thank you MPRG for continuing to support the community and visitors to explore and examine our world through practice, expanding our ways of seeing. Karina Lamb Manager Libraries, Arts and Culture Mornington Peninsula Shire

ESSAY Danny Lacy Artistic Director / Senior Curator, MPRG

Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery’s (MPRG) National Works on Paper prize was created in 1998 through the amalgamation of the Gallery’s two previous awards, Spring Festival of Drawing (1973-1997) and Prints Acquisitive (1974-1996). These two awards were crucial initiatives in the early direction of the Gallery under Alan McCulloch and became the linchpins of acquisitions for the collection, firmly consolidating the Gallery’s reputation in the public gallery sector.1 Former MPRG Senior Curator Rodney James notes that ‘the main impetus’ behind the consolidation of the two awards ‘was to develop one acquisitive exhibition that would continue to respond to changes in contemporary art practice and extend the geographical representation in the collection’.2 Over 20 years later, National Works on Paper has become a nationally significant acquisitive award and exhibition, not just in name, but through its ability to attract leading artists from across the country, enabling the Gallery to broaden the scope and representation of contemporary art in our collection. Up until the year 2000 physical entries for our awards were sent to the Gallery for shortlisting and paraded in front of the judging panel in a live action performance. It was logistically challenging to maintain this degree of registration as the awards grew in size and stature. The recent transition to online-only applications has transformed the ability for wider access and inclusion in the prize. While streamlining the application process, online submissions have presented their own set of challenges, especially the homogeneity of shortlisting from a single digital image, let alone the risk that the aura of the work of art may get lost somewhere in translation. In recent times, the role of the judges has become amplified in navigating this conundrum and understanding the space of current contemporary practice, to best read the materiality and wider context of the works.

From 1164 entries, this year we also received over 150 requests for feedback from artists not shortlisted as finalists. In my feedback I referred to one of the key challenges as being the ability to push the work so that paper is not merely a background, but that the paper becomes the space intrinsic to how the work is read. This speaks to the agency of paper, the importance of the medium that holds both the creative marks and conceptual ideas. The four works that I touch on in this text offer a unique glimpse into the depth and complexity possible with paper. However, all the finalists represent how artists are constantly adapting and transforming the medium of paper. Paper is integral to Brian Fuata’s work Paper waits, a unique propositional work that invites gallery visitors to activate a stack of white A1 paper. This participatory performance takes the idea of a work on paper to a new dimension, embedding the structure of the paper as the object and central to the action. Through a set of instructions, visitors engage with a sheet of paper and their own imagination. The work is both anchored in the space with the pile of paper and temporal as fleeting actions happen throughout the course of the exhibition. Paper is painted on both sides with a clay slip to begin the transformation process in Naomi Eller’s elegantly subtle work Frammenti – Fragments. Eller layers clays, shellac, gouache and wax onto very lightweight, extremely strong Japanese kozu paper; the malleability of the paper withstanding the congregation of different mediums. The fragments are softened at the edge with water and gently ripped, released as forms and enclosed by their own materiality.3 Collaged together on the gallery wall these fragments form an abstract constellation. Paper that is soaked and pressed becomes embedded with the intricate detail of Annika Romeyn’s mark making that re-imagines the landscape at Guerilla Bay (Yuin Country), New South Wales. Romeyn’s mesmerising large-scale watercolour monotype Endurance 5 is saturated with gorgeous shades of ultramarine blue and printed across nine sheets of paper; using the same single plate – printed one panel at a time, the image on the plate is reversed in print. Compositionally complex, Romeyn trusts in the process and the materials, relying on memory and intuition to match the wash and tonal areas across the panels.4

Paper is transformed in Jenna Lee’s captivating work re/verse/d, a series of small sculptural vessels created from deconstructing and re-constituting the pages of colonial texts which misrepresent or perpetuate hurtful stereotypes of Aboriginal people. For Jenna, the act of reading the original books opens a way of understanding how to deconstruct and transform the text.5 The pages of the original text are pulped and hand pressed, reconstructed as new sculptural forms. The paper, filtered and renewed from its past use, is re-activated with a new historical narrative. The 2020 National Works on Paper prize is a celebration of paper, of artistic resilience, and a time capsule of creativity prior to the instability and uncertainty caused by the global coronavirus pandemic. The seventy-four works presented in this iteration of the award were made in the preceding two years leading up to the middle of a tempestuous year where bushfires had already scorched the land and a virus had started to plague the world. This exhibition offers a chance to step back in time and re-visit a period before we transitioned into ‘a new normal’ of social distancing and mask wearing. It’s worth reflecting on this in relationship to the vibrancy of the work on display. The positive energy, confidence, experimentation, humour, wit and clarity of the works sits in stark contrast with Melbourne’s recent lockdown and the residual haze of having just woken from 112 days of hibernation. What we crave more than ever at this moment is real connection, tactile, embracing and warm. The works in the 2020 National Works on Paper inspire us and soothe us from the collective uncertainty we’ve experienced this year and offer a gentle reminder of the agency and propensity for art to enrich and transform our lives. Susan McCulloch, Behind the Parrot Door: The First Twenty Years, in Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery 1970-2020, MPRG, 2020, pp.14-15. 2 Rodney James, MPRG at Fifty: 1991-2011, in Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery 1970-2020, MPRG, 2020, p.23. 3 Naomi Eller, email conversation with the author, 27 October 2020. 4 Annika Romeyn, email conversation with the author, 28 October 2020. 5 Jenna Lee, email conversation with the author, 27 October 2020. 1

THE WORKS

Kim Anderson

Down Amongst the Bones 2020

Suzanne Archer

Messenger Masks 2018

Lyn Ashby

The Light Down Here 2019

Peter Atkins

Deconstructed Colour Charts: ‘The Moods of Colour’, ‘Interior Colour Range (Walpamur)’, ‘Colour Inspiration (British Paints)’ 2019

Elizabeth Banfield

herewith (worry boxes) 2018

Hannah Beilharz

Ashen Shadows: a disappearing place 2020

Chris Bond and Drew Pettifer

Untitled (Moses in the mirror) 2020

Godwin Bradbeer

Portrait Noir 2019

Kaye Brown

Yirrinkiripwoja 2020

Jane Burton

Ferelith 2020

Penelope Cain

A Pair of Curses 2020

Marilou Chagnaud

Reflection 2020

Timothy Cook

Kulama 2020

Matt Coyle

Formation 2019

Sam Cranstoun

Untitled abstract (11:39am, January 28, 1984, Cape Canaveral, FL) 2020

Julia Davis and Lisa Jones

Thresholds: a chorus, #19/07/19 2019

Stephen Eastaugh

Skellig Michael 2019

Naomi Eller

Frammenti - Fragments 2020

Robert Ewing

Fred and Ginger disguised as imaginary forms within a landscape setting 2019

Robert Fielding

Nganampa Wangka 2018

Anna Finlayson

Working Drawing-Pink Cubes 2020

Belinda Fox

What goes around II 2019

David Frazer

The Tangled Wood (composition I) 2018

Kath Fries

Hive Drawing 2020

Brian Fuata

Paper waits 2018

Ash Garwood

Craton 2020

Minna Gilligan

Where did all those yesterdays go 2020

Shaun Gladwell

Surfer Funeral for Liberty 2 2019

Tamika Grant-Iramu

Carving Memories: propagation by roots 2019

Katherine Hattam

Women’s Consciousness, Man’s World 2020

Judy Holding

The Pardalote and the Wren 2020

Anna Hoyle

Skuntz Lycra 2020

Clare Humphries

New Moon on Monday 2019

Winsome Jobling

Cycad – Regeneration 2020

Deborah Kelly

The Gods of Tiny Things 2019

Iluwanti Ken

Walawulu ngunytju kukaku ananyi (Mother eagles going hunting) 2020

Martin King

Unnatural history 2019

Ilona Kiss

Calypso 2018

Barbie Kjar

Backbone 2020

Jenna Lee

re/verse/d 2020

Dane Lovett

Into the Unknown 2020

Chips Mackinolty

Colonial Virus Collection 2020

Laith McGregor

Ode 2020

Noel McKenna

Dog Jumping 2018

Roma McLaughlin

Crosscurrent 2020

Todd McMillan

Lull (viii) 2019

Fiona McMonagle

Rachel Meghan Markle 2020

Vera Möller

memoriama 2019

Ray Monde

As the world falls apart, I am far from home 2020

Kent Morris

Barkindji Blue Sky - Ancestral Connections #1 2018

Tom O’Hern

Drawings I made in Queenstown (the Tasmanian one not the New Zealand one) 2020

Becc Ország

Fortitude 2018

David Palliser

Trance 2020

Louise Paramor

Pretty Green 2018

Hubert Pareroultja

West of Haast Bluff / Ikuntji, near Mt Liebig / Watiyawanu, NT 2020

Riley Payne

Twenty Twenty 2020

Tom Polo

soft shield 2020

Patrick Pound

Joinery 2018

Linda Puna

Ngayuku Ngura 2020

Cameron Robbins

MON MON 24 hrs/Rain Fronts 2019

Brian Robinson

Uncharted: Astrolabe and Zelee in Kulkalgal country 2020

Annika Romeyn

Endurance 5 2019

Pip Ryan

Hook, Line and Sinker 2019

Wendy Sharpe

Ladders to the Sky 2018

Kylie Stillman

Mud Print 2020

Jacqui Stockdale

The Borning Son 2020

Marina Strocchi

The Escarpment KV V 2018

Hiromi Tango

Fragile Hope 2019

Hossein Valamanesh

Tokamachi Samue 2018

Lisa Waup

Many Hands 2020

Rosie Weiss

Targets 2020

Regina Wilson

Wupun (sun mat) 2020

Judith Wright

Sightlines [6] 2019

Heidi Yardley

Strangers to ourselves 2020

THE ARTISTS

KIM ANDERSON

SUZANNE ARCHER

LYN ASHBY

b. 1979 Ballarat, Victoria Lives and works in Ballarat, Victoria

b. 1945 Guildford, United Kingdom; arrived Australia 1965 Lives and works in Wedderburn, New South Wales

b. 1953 London, United Kingdom; arrived Australia 1960 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

ink, charcoal and pastel on paper 76.0 x 56.0 cm (sheet)

Messenger Masks 2018

The Light Down Here 2019

paper, ink, charcoal, chalk pastel, graphite, acrylic paint, metal stands 90.0 x 150.0 x 50.0 cm (size variable)

artist’s book 33.0 x 50.0 cm (open)

I am fascinated by the physical manifestation of grief and other intense psychological states. Recently my work has focused on the widely felt experience of ecological grief and anxiety associated with climate change and the loss of fragile ecosystems. My drawings depict solitary figures immersed in challenging yet wildly beautiful landscapes, and are based on photographs I take of myself physically interacting with these rugged, isolated terrains. This interaction takes place as a solitary performance oscillating between awe, despair, mourning, reverence and solace, witnessed only by a camera lens, and then translated into drawing through a process of meticulous, emotionally laden mark-making.

In 2012 I began making masklike sculptures using found bags as a starting point. The mask as an adopted persona or reflective image of one’s various identities has always fascinated me, from primitivism to the exposure of subconscious renderings in the art of the insane.

My practice is the making of books (usually limited edition artist’s books), many of which pose philosophical, narrative or material questions of the book form itself. Such questions often involve the nature of personal identity and human meaning in an apparently indifferent universe. For example, I wanted to see how the book form might extend Plato’s notion in The Allegory of the Cave, in which it is proposed we humans live as if in a cave, unwittingly mistaking shadows for reality. This allegory invites us to imagine what might be beyond our limited conception of things, and to conjure other possibilities in the true light of day. I took thousands of shots of humans casting shadows created in the small, everyday, passing stories of their lives, and then, as if over the course of a single day and its shifting shadows, let the book propose another possibility for all these intersecting stories.

Down Amongst the Bones 2020

Down Amongst the Bones arose out of a residency on the Isle of Skye in 2019. As I clambered around the wind-swept coastline and molded myself into the ancient rock formations, I felt vulnerable, humbled and penitent in the face of nature’s vastness and resilience. Represented by Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne and Penny Contemporary, Hobart

In 2016 I began a series of works, in which I continued to use found and repurposed bags as raw material. With the inclusion of automatic writing, I then realised a sound piece that could accompany them. Messenger Masks are a direct and natural development of those concerns. I decided to challenge my drawing practice and bring it in line with those pieces, I used my favoured drawing media and transposed it onto Arches Watercolour Rough 300gsm paper. I then crudely shaped this paper to reflect the random prop of the found bag. Represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne Photographer, Stephen Oxenbury

PETER ATKINS

ELIZABETH BANFIELD

HANNAH BEILHARZ

b. 1963, Murrurundi, New South Wales. Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1963, Chadwell St Mary, United Kingdom; arrived Australia 1966 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1994, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Deconstructed Colour Charts: ‘The Moods of Colour’, ‘Interior Colour Range (Walpamur)’, ‘Colour Inspiration (British Paints)’ 2019 hand cut paper 71.0 x 57.0 cm; 68.0 x 57.0 cm; 71.0 x 57.0 cm My practice centres around the appropriation and deconstruction of readymade abstract material collected from the urban environment. I’m particularly attracted to everyday elements that offer a collective experience – commonplace things that most of us see or interact with on a daily basis. Movie posters, train tickets, product packaging, road signs, record covers, bubble gum wrappers and most recently hardware store colour charts from the 1970s and 80s. I’ve carefully cut out all unnecessary information including text and incidental imagery, leaving only the nameless colours themselves, floating and untethered. However, just enough information is preserved to help trigger the viewers’ own personal narratives. Perhaps the colours will evoke shared memories of the experience of family and loved ones selecting colours for bedrooms, nurseries, rumpus rooms or the exterior of the family home. Represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

herewith (worry boxes) 2018 linocut artist book, phase box enclosures, kozo tissue inserts each box sized 5.0 x 5.0 x 5.0 cm, crumpled inserts 43.0 x 65.0 cm when open I have been making phase boxes for many years. The process of opening such boxes can add to the evocation of intimacy and privacy within a work. These boxes are made from paper that once protected the press blanket; the layers and layers of fine line linocut ghost prints are a pleasant by-product of printing with Japanese tissue paper that is only 9gsm. They are worry boxes; nothing was wasted in the process of making them, just as nothing is wasted when our minds come looking for things to worry about. Most of the boxes are displayed closed, with only a small viewing hole that was made when creating the button closure. The viewer can see a little of the intensely coloured abstract text within. When a box is opened, the crumpled tissue remembers its cubic shape, just as we remember the security of our familiar, habitual worries.

Ashen Shadows: a disappearing place 2020 pen drawing on photographic paper 27.5 x 49.0 cm

Through intensive processbased methods of making that incorporate drawing, printmaking, photography and sculpture, I create largescale projects that explore the intersecting political issues of climate change, colonialism, social inequality, and genderbased violence. Ashen Shadows: a disappearing place explores the personal and collective traumatic impacts of environmental devastation and disappearing landscapes. The work reveals how the intertwining physical, cultural and psychological connections we have with our environment are made increasingly complex by the impacts of climate change. The method of pen drawing over the original photographic image highlights the overbearing effects of humans upon the natural world, and the eventual disappearance of a recognisable landscape within this context. Ashen Shadows presents the landscape as a disintegrating artefact from a future we are fast approaching.

CHRIS BOND AND

GODWIN BRADBEER

KAYE BROWN

DREW PETTIFER

b. 1950, Dunedin, New Zealand; arrived Australia 1995 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1954, Milikapiti, Melville Island, Northern Territory Language group: Tiwi Lives and works in Milikapiti, Melville Island, Northern Territory

Bond b. 1975, Melbourne, Victoria; Pettifer b. 1980, Shepparton, Victoria Bond lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria; Pettifer lives and works in Shepparton and Melbourne, Victoria Untitled (Moses in the mirror) 2020 graphite on chromogenic print on paper 60.0 x 40.0 cm This new collaborative work by Drew Pettifer and Chris Bond meditates on themes of loss, memory and representation. Moses, the subject of the work, had been in a relationship with Pettifer for a year and a half when he passed away in an accident. The tension between absence and presence reflects the subject positions of the two artists. The apprehension of absence is something tangible for Pettifer, while the subject’s lived presence is slippery and indistinct to Bond and those who did not know Moses in life. The contrast between the tungsten-lit photograph and the graphite drawing embodies a sense of mediated memory and the freezing of time, the kind of stasis that occurs when someone passes – a sensation both artists have felt through the loss of partners at a young age. The final work creates something austere and solid from flesh, preserving and trapping the body in perpetuity.

Portrait Noir 2019 chinagraph, gesso, silver oxide, pastel on paper

Yirrinkiripwoja 2020

94.0 x 95.0 cm

locally sourced natural ochres on primed paper 56.0 x 76.0 cm

I engage my subject as a meditation upon human existence. The phenomenon of being, it would seem, is astonishing enough, even without attendant narrative.

Yirrinkiripwoja is an example of Brown using the Kayimwagakimi (carved ironwood comb), a uniquely Tiwi tool used to apply dots to the face and body for ceremony and yoi (dance). She uses natural ochres sourced from Melville Island and processed by hand at the art centre to paint.

Presented with compositional simplicity, I endeavour in Portrait Noir to position my subject without adornment, ambiguously black or white and simultaneously strong and vulnerable, beautiful but hurt and capable of hurt. Men have positioned themselves culturally and politically within a circumstance of moral crisis across many fields readily identified. I find myself compelled as an artist to address within this physical frame the scourge of our collective guilt, shame, injury and bewilderment without flinching from that harsh reality and to do so with a compassion that is sincere but not gratuitous. For me the raw materiality of drawing sidesteps facade and décor and permits a greater nearness to the enigma of our essence. Represented by James Makin Gallery, Melbourne

Her jilamara (body paint design) is very layered and reminiscent of some of the old Tiwi artists and the body painting styles they used to prepare themselves for ceremonies. Brown now applies these body art designs on bark, canvas and paper. Although relatively new to the art centre, Brown is gaining recognition as a leading female artist at Jilamara Arts and Crafts. She recently had her inaugural solo exhibition with Gabriella Roy at Aboriginal and Pacific Art in Sydney and was a finalist in the NATSIAA Bark category in 2018. Jilamara Arts – Milikapiti, Northern Territory

JANE BURTON

PENELOPE CAIN

MARILOU CHAGNAUD

b. 1966, Brisbane, Queensland Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1970, Adelaide, South Australia Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

b. 1983, Montreal, Canada; arrived Australia 2016 Lives and works in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

A Pair of Curses 2020

Reflection 2020

collage, giclee print on rag paper

hand folded paper, digital printing 48.0 x 156.0 cm each

Ferelith 2020 gelatin silver photograph 40.0 x 30.0 cm

73.0 x 56.0 cm each (diptych)

My work has for a long time explored mortality, female desire, isolation and loneliness, through a female lens. Ferelith is a kind of portrait of my niece and muse. Through our collaboration I’m able to perform an incantation and an evocation of female metamorphosis. The costume of leaves that covers my muse becomes a chrysalis from which she shall emerge; breaking through the membrane of internality to externality. Within the print she is pictured between photo frames, suspended in a liminal zone between twin light sources, caught perpetually as the moth to light, caught between dream and reality, between thought and feeling. This photograph was inspired by The Robing of the Bride by Max Ernst (1940), a painting which features a female figure in an elaborate cloak in a fantastic and surreal scene; it has been understood to symbolise the journey of womanhood from chastity, through marriage and beyond. 88

I have an ongoing interest in the extracted, transformed and colonised landscapes of the Anthropocene. Using photography, video and collage through an expanded storytelling, I draw equally on my research science background and art practice. This diptych is part of an inprogress series, Object Bound Curses, which takes as a starting point that time the current Prime Minster brought a lump of coal into Parliament. Pretending for a moment that cursing is a thing, and that words such as vested interests, cabal, lobbying can be bound to objects, this series playfully looks for a propositional methodology to neutralise power, in the face of rising climate concerns. Using collage, photography and instruments of decoration, such as feathers, velvet, braiding and coral jewellery to collage against the hands and arms of power in well-tailored business suits. The works intentionally tap the feel of 17th century Dutch portrait paintings, with their lexicon of colonial wealth, domesticated hierarchies of people, plants and things.

Reflection explores notions recurrent in my practice: movement, dimensionality, and perception. The work is a diptych made from large sheets of Japanese paper, digitally printed and folded by hand. As the viewers move along the work, the folds reveal a changing pattern that alternates sequences of positive and negative space. Working across printmaking, sculpture, and site-responsive installations, I am interested in how abstraction and repetition can create dynamic experiences that impact our sense of space. My recent work pushes the boundaries of paper to explore its sculptural potential through folding, stacking and hanging.

TIMOTHY COOK

MATT COYLE

SAM CRANSTOUN

b. 1958, Milikapiti, Melville Island, Northern Territory Language group: Tiwi Lives and works in Milikapiti, Melville Island, Northern Territory

b. 1971, Nantwich, United Kingdom; arrived Australia 1971 Lives and works in Hobart, Tasmania

b. 1987, Brisbane, Queensland Lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland

Kulama 2020 locally sourced natural ochres on primed paper 56.0 x 76.0 cm During his extensive and successful career, Cook has focused on representing the Kulama. The Kulama ceremony is a traditional initiation for young men which coincides with the harvest of wild yam in the late wet season when a ring appears around Japarra (the moon). The circles in his work symbolise the moon, yam and ritual circles of the ceremony, the ‘cross’ reflects his spiritual life and the pwanga (dots) reflect the japalinga (stars). He is well known for his large works on stretched linen and paper, but in recent years has begun to experiment with working his unique designs onto stringybark. The texture and natural qualities of the bark and paper surfaces complement his use of natural ochres. Cook paints exclusively with natural red, white and yellow ochres that are sourced from country around Melville Island, creating a cultural and material representation of the rich Tiwi landscape. Jilamara Arts - Milikapiti and Aboriginal & Pacific Art, Northern Territory

Formation 2019 ink, pencil, gouache, mixed media on paper, mounted on hardboard 88.0 x 165.0 cm (3 panels each 88.0 x 55.0 cm) Formation is loosely based on the life-sized wilderness diorama that for many years was housed in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. The scene perfectly depicted the rugged and inhospitable nature that one associates with the Tasmanian bush, with its coarse tufts of grass, windswept trees and the occasional small furry animal poking its head out from the undergrowth. I have always loved dioramas and miniature models. Having grown up in Canberra I was obsessed with the Australian War Memorial and I would spend hours staring at the huge collection of dioramas positioned throughout the building. In making my triptych Formation, I was interested in depicting a realistic representation of the Tasmanian landscape but using an artificial reference point such as a diorama to produce something that appears almost real, but not quite right, just a fraction off. Something akin to a childhood memory.

Untitled abstract (11:39am, January 28, 1984, Cape Canaveral, FL) 2020 pencil on 1 x 1 mm graphed tracing paper 30.0 x 21.0 cm

Based on a photograph taken immediately after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, this work is about grief – both public and private. It is about grief as both performance, and as a purely internal state. It is a work about the personal and tragic toll history often takes, and it serves as a constant reminder of the cost of discovery, the price paid for progress and exploration. Grief has long been an emotion that I have struggled to reckon with. It is so poorly represented and understood, and yet is something that touches us all – often in the most profound way. I have recently been struck by the cruelty imposed on individuals whose grief is attached to significant historical events, and how their personal and immediate grief seemingly becomes the property of the greater public. The act of pixelating this image by hand serves as an attempt to restore privacy – albeit a futile one. Represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane

Represented by Bett Gallery, Hobart 89

JULIA DAVIS AND LISA JONES

STEPHEN EASTAUGH

NAOMI ELLER

Davis b. 1957 Melbourne, Victoria; Jones b. 1964, London, United Kingdom; arrived Australia 2002 Both artists live and work in Sydney, New South Wales

b. 1960, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Broome, Western Australia

b. 1973, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Skellig Michael 2019

Frammenti - Fragments 2020

synthetic polymer paint, wax pencil, water colour, maritime charts 26.5 x 36.0 cm each (triptych)

Kozu paper, various clays, wax, shellac and gouache on canvas Dimensions variable

I spent time drawing in a remote artist’s retreat in Ireland during 2019 where I luckily managed to visit a strange rocky island off the coast called Skellig Michael. Between the 6th and 8th centuries a monastic settlement operated on the tiny island which is now a UNESCO world heritage site. It was a wild, spooky and mesmerising location rising abruptly from the North Atlantic Ocean that seemed to me like it was begging to be somehow depicted on the maritime charts I had collected from a recent voyage on a cargo container ship in the Indian Ocean.

My practice is inspired by nature, myth and the phenomenology of what it is to be human. Through materials of the earth – various types of clay bodies, papers and found objects, I look to explore how we navigate memory and what draws us towards a form, a representation and the power of the haptic. It is the material, the materiality and the space in between and around that I believe holds a dynamism in these new series of collages. After trialling many types of paper, it was a fairly robust and accessible Japanese paper called Kozu that I found could hold the weight and capture the lightness I was after, especially as I paint with clay, shellac and wax. In order to capture the intensity and fleeting quality of how we view time, each separate piece of the collage could be seen as a kind of fragmented ruin.

Thresholds: a chorus, #19/07/19 2019 sediment (Sydney) on Heritage rag 320gsm paper 160.0 x 240.0 cm Julia Davis and Lisa Jones are Sydney-based artists who maintain independent practices and also collaborate on projects that explore the relationship between people and places. Their latest project, Thresholds: a chorus, reinterprets subterranean landscapes through drawings that reveal hidden aspects of place and suspend the rhythms of nature and human action. This work is one of a series of drawings that was made in the disused tunnels under Sydney’s CBD and explores the poetic and atmospheric contrasts of a city and what lies below. The medium for these on-site drawings is sourced from accretionary site residue that is used to impregnate the paper substrate to conjure a literal response from the landscape. Created by submerging sheets of paper in flooded chambers, they contain accretions of water-borne rock and brake dust from passing trains along with registrations from the process of making the work. 90

I am stimulated by landscape, travel and the human condition. I respond to the inseparable human experiences of existence and movement. Both I see as mysterious, fascinating and worthwhile investigating. In this triptych I use cartography, texture and dislocation to help myself navigate some of the tricky bits of life.

ROBERT EWING

ROBERT FIELDING

ANNA FINLAYSON

b. 1958, Northam, Western Australia Lives and works in Pinjarra, Western Australia

b. 1969, Port Augusta, South Australia Language groups: Western Arrernte, Yankunytjatjara, Pitjantjatjara Lives and works in Mimili, South Australia

b. 1968, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Fred and Ginger disguised as imaginary forms within a landscape setting 2019 colour pencil on paper 56.0 x 76.0 cm

The local bushland and farming areas of Pinjarra and the Darling Range of Western Australia remain the primary source of content referenced within Ewing’s work. Intimate places within this environ are observed and studied to formulate multifaceted landscape compositions. Ewing combines personal iconographies with contrasting pictorial elements, inviting us to explore a fractured, disrupted landscape shaped by implied and natural activity. The artwork evokes an atmosphere of intrigue and ushers the viewer towards a doorway illuminated with the promise of a place that might be. Line, colour and light combine to create a place of contrasting visual elements, a place of dramatic undertones, where the real and imagined exist within a landscape of expectation and uncertainty. The artwork is a manifestation of an evocative place, that is both inhabited and isolated, where the vision of the garden remains beautiful and serene, a place somewhere between our memory and imaginings.

Nganampa Wangka 2018

Working Drawing-Pink Cubes 2020 pencil and gouache on paper 76.0 x 57.0 cm

inkjet print on photo rag with burnt and pierced alterations 192.0 x 153.0 cm My art practice is about reconciliation, about holding on to the knowledge our Elders give us and carrying it into the future, together. Thinking about the conflicts and protests happening all over the world during this time of social change has taken me down different roads over the past months. They all lead back to one thing: wangka (language). Wangka is communication, understanding and interpretation. Wangka carries the knowledge from generation to generation. Wangka can end a fight before any other weapons are drawn. Wangka keeps us strong and connected to our roots. Nganampa Wangka. Our language. We as Anangu know the many languages of our neighbours and the knowledge these languages hold. Our language gave, gives and will continue to give our people strengths, to celebrate our roots, our differences, and our joint futures. Represented by Mimili Maku Arts, South Australia

This drawing is part of an ongoing body of work that explores the creation of pattern and illusionistic space through the overlapping of forms and motif. The fine hand ruled grids that underpin the drawings remain as a link to previous works and make reference to historical precedents. Interlocking forms expand and overlap in a playful exploration of form and ground. Numeric and textual notations, transcribed throughout the making process, reveal part of the ongoing development of the drawing. The colour mixing process is also documented in the drawing and is an important visual component. The title of the work, Working Drawing-Pink Cubes describes the various layers of imagery within the work while also indicating a methodological approach that encompasses imagery derived from multiple sources including historical references, preparatory processes and the ongoing experience of drawing. Represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne 91

BELINDA FOX

DAVID FRAZER

KATH FRIES

b. 1975, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Den Haag, Netherlands

b. 1966, Foster, Victoria Lives and works in Castlemaine, Victoria

b. 1979, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

What goes around II 2019

The Tangled Wood (composition I) 2018

Hive Drawing 2020

digital pigment print on paper 154.0 x 198.0 cm

What goes around II is an exemplar of my work and its current concerns for seeking balance in the increasingly unstable fabric of our societies and environment. The digital print is grand in scale, a macro version of my drawings, it is ‘more than’ the original hand can offer, an ‘uber’ experience, so to speak, of my humble drawings and is a material and conceptual reference to our times where desires and realities are constantly blurred in our virtual worlds. The digital process has been used specifically for this reason. The end product is an all-encompassing physical deluge of wave and movement. Abstracted forms, art history references and political undercurrents are present amongst the beauty but with no grounded element an unease is ever present. Although made in 2019, it feels very current for our current times in 2020. Represented by Gallerysmith, Melbourne and Arthouse Gallery, Sydney

etching on paper 80.0 x 120.0 cm

This etching started with one plate and it grew organically from plate to plate, the composition developing as it went along; disorderly like the bush itself, strangely beautiful yet tense and uncomfortable. The crooked and entangled trees that dominate my composition become my personal metaphor for man. They carry the scars of a life buffered by the elements, yet still they stand as weary yet upright sentinels – a lifetime of memories written upon their bark and twisted forms. Assisted by Marguerite Brown Represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne & Sydney

beeswax and turmeric on paper 1500.0 x 375.0 cm

My practice investigates ways that we are entangled with our material and immaterial surroundings through our senses, memories and relations; and how being attentive to such embodied experiences can nurture empathy, care and compassion for all beings and for the Earth. Hive Drawing was created as a participatory drawing, reflecting community connections. Each participant was asked to place their hand on the paper next to an existing circle and draw around it with beeswax, then dust the circle with turmeric. The result is a collection of golden honeycomb circles, created collectively like a beehive. Honeybees are social insects and they live interdependently with each other. This socialised process of working collaboratively is reflected in Hive Drawing – as each participant builds on the hand-traced circles of their neighbour – and opens up an embodied meditative experience that invites alternate ways of considering how we live together with each other and other beings.

BRIAN FUATA

ASH GARWOOD

MINNA GILLIGAN

b. 1978, Wellington, New Zealand Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

b. 1986, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Los Angeles, Unites States of America

b. 1990, Wattle Glen, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Paper waits 2018

Craton 2020 silver gelatin print from 3D Cinema 4D Render 147.0 x 203.0 cm

Where did all those yesterdays go 2020

Performance 84.0 x 118.0 cm

Paper waits is a pile of A1 sheets of white paper, held flat by the floor, the length side lain flushed against the skirting of the wall. should you arrive, choose a sheet of paper and maybe do this …

These photographs are created in 3D software. Digital models are generated, sculpted, skinned, textured and mapped with fragments of large format negatives. The photographs are rendered and the final prints are made by me in the darkroom as silver gelatin mural contact prints. I am most interested in the genre of landscape and my works have developed this in relation to personal influences of queer space, geology and science fiction. These are cyborg spaces, missing a traditional photographic index but engaged with both the history of landscape photography and the fragile complexity that exists between the physical, technological and photographic realm.

marker, ballpoint pen, coloured pencil and gel pen on paper 84.1 x 59.4 cm

I work primarily with painting, drawing and collage. My practice speaks of fleeting, personal encounters with the past and present, and manifests in a tumultuous reconciliation of both. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 I have gravitated towards drawing as a means of processing the tumultuous circumstances we find ourselves in. Mark making in my signature scribbly, doodling style became a way of marking time. A drawing a week, I’d think. Time at home ended up passing rather quickly. In the act of making, I was able to disassociate temporarily from 24 hour news cycles and humming anxiety. This work Where did all those yesterdays go was born from a YouTube comment I read underneath a video of a 1970s disco track. ‘Where did all those yesterdays go?’ the author mused, amongst other commenters reminiscing about days of their youth. The yesterdays of my 2020 have gone into this drawing. Represented by Daine Singer, Melbourne 93

SHAUN GLADWELL

TAMIKA GRANT-IRAMU

KATHERINE HATTAM

b. 1972, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1995, Brisbane, Queensland Lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland

b. 1950, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Surfer Funeral for Liberty 2 2019

Carving Memories: propagation by roots 2019

Women’s Consciousness, Man’s World 2020

vinyl-cut relief print on Hahnemühle paper 200.0 x 270.0 cm

mixed media on paper 165.0 x 128.0 cm

Since I was young, I have always been intrigued by the intricate patterns that can be found within minute areas of native flora. Reflecting back on what made me most curious as a child, it was the interconnectivity apparent in the natural world. Carving Memories: propagation by roots focuses on a motif of minute flora that emerged from my childhood curiosity and has frequently reoccurred in my practice. It pays homage to a motif that has influenced and inspired the creative expression of my personal connection to Brisbane’s natural environment. My relationship with the process of carving corresponds to the ongoing development that a tree and other flora endure. The constant randomness that arises from the directions in which I carve my repeated patterns allows newly discovered forms to grow, harnessing the large scale of the work to bring into focus minute aspects of nature that often go unnoticed.

‘The desire comes first’, or something approximating this, was how American artist Eva Hesse explained her working method. It rings true for me. My desire was to depict Hokusai’s wave crashing between hillsides of Australian flora and fauna. I was making this work last summer during the bush fires. I lived through and lost my house in the Ash Wednesday fires. I now see, after the making of this work, that it depicts some sort of natural disaster, the threat to our natural world.

Represented by Onespace Gallery, Brisbane

Represented by Daine Singer Gallery, Melbourne and Art House Gallery, Sydney

relief etching (liftground, open bite, spit bite, aquatint, hardground, burnished aquatint and drypoint) on BFK Rives 300gsm paper 90.0 x 120.0 cm This work reflects my interest in iconography that extends beyond nationality and even its own history, thus becoming emblematic of entire philosophical, political and social systems. Bartholdi and Eiffel’s Statue of Liberty (Liberty enlightening the world) is a neoclassical sculpture that produces this level of icon power. I wanted to investigate this through juxtaposing Lady Liberty with the inverted imagery of a surfer’s funeral – also known as a ‘paddle out ceremony’. Surfboards were positioned to substitute the tiara rays of Liberty, who is based on the image of Themis, the Ancient Greek Titaness. This etching state reversed the intaglio etching process through rolling ink over the plate surface, thus producing a negative. This abstracted and transformed Libertas into the aesthetic of a robot from Fritz Lang’s 1927 film Metropolis, or the latter C-3PO droid from the Star Wars film series. Represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne 94

The title comes from the spine of the book Women’s Consciousness, Man’s World – a feminist text I read as a student in the 1970s. It sits on the table, part of the interior world that’s inside our heads, the women’s consciousness. Many years after its publication the title still signifies feminism but in the wider sense of care, care for the landscape and the planet.

JUDY HOLDING

ANNA HOYLE

CLARE HUMPHRIES

b. 1945, Bendigo, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1969, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1973, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in London, United Kingdom

The Pardalote and the Wren 2020

Skuntz Lycra 2020

New Moon on Monday 2019

tissue paper, wire, acrylic paint, ink, caste bronze on paper 270.0 x 145.0 cm

gouache and acrylic on paper 60.0 x 180.0 cm

hand-burnished and sanded linocut prints with monotype and wood 35.0 x 170.0 cm

Through my multidisciplinary artistic practice, I strive to create a personal visual vocabulary of symbolic forms to convey my lifelong connection to the landscape of central Victoria. In this work I depict small birds in the arid landscape of the Goldfields as they flit among the tallest branches of the Box Ironbark forest; the Pardalote and the Wren animate the sky with swift movement, they are never still. The fragility of their tiny forms is contrasted by the strong colour of their feathers, only seen as glimpses or flashes of intense energy across the monochromatic landscape, creating a vibrant and welcome distinction. In the years following the gold rush, after mining had all but destroyed the flora and fauna, the birds symbolise a feeling of regeneration; the colour and movement of their feathers energise the subtle landscape, and lift the spirits of those who are fortunate to observe their beauty.

Skuntz Lycra is a gouache and acrylic painting that is inspired by my longstanding interest in words and phrases inspired by self-help, advertising, social trends and consumer culture.

New Moon on Monday explores the perceptual flux that can occur when we observe Earth’s nearest satellite. The work began one night when I saw the Moon by chance, out of the corner of my eye. It was full and rising above the horizon, throwing the oblique light of the Sun towards me. Somehow it looked small and distant, unlike the Moon I remembered seeing one month earlier, which had seemed nearer, and glowed ochre through a filter of urban haze. Both moons – the one I ‘discovered’ at that moment, and the one I recalled in my mind’s eye – hovered together in my thoughts, as if occupying the same space and time. The Moon I saw, shared the sky with an afterimage. New Moon on Monday explores the idea that we may never see the Moon without recalling how it has appeared to us in days gone by. Our observations and perceptions are haunted by remembered moments, and also anticipate future ghosts.

In this work I have built on my love for the aesthetics of text in my invented phrases. Combining this with visual manifestations of an unlikely suburban duo: scourer and active-wear, enables my love for playing with and re-inventing everyday subject matter as an artist … also, an opportunity for sometimes ironic, humorous or critical commentary on consumer culture …

Represented by Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne

WINSOME JOBLING

DEBORAH KELLY

ILUWANTI KEN

b. 1957, Bathurst, New South Wales Lives and works in Darwin, Northern Territory

b. 1962, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

Cycad – Regeneration 2020

paper collage, digital animation size variable

b. 1944, Rocket Bore, South Australia Language group: Pitjantjatjara Lives and works in Amata, South Australia

drypoint on handmade Gamba Grass and abaca paper with pulp painted inclusions 119.0 x 43.0 cm

A ‘sketch’ of an iconic Darwin cycad regenerating after bushfires. These fires rage hot and high in the canopy of the native Savannah fuelled by Gamba and other introduced grasses. Paper is born in the ebb and flow of water. The flow of water and cellulose fibre pulp across the mould is integral to the forming of hydrogen bonding necessary to form a sheet of paper. Each poured, translucent layer is agitated back and forward to bond into an even sheet. The ebb and flow of the seasons informs my papermaking, I collect in the wet when the sap is flowing and the fibres are soft and form the sheets in the dry when the humidity is lower. In this work the native Spear grass and invasive Gamba grass was collected in the early wet season. Other fibres used include cotton and Abaca.

The Gods of Tiny Things 2019

Walawulu ngunytju kukaku ananyi (Mother eagles going hunting) 2020 ink on Saunders Waterford 300gsm paper 152.0 x 125.0 cm

The Gods of Tiny Things is an experimental collaborative animation considering life in peril. At collage camp at Bundanon in beautiful Yuin country in southern New South Wales, we dreamt and brought into being personifications of our fears, of failures and wounds, of impossible appetites roaring with hunger. Over an intense week of study, research, play and practice, we conjured these figures and landscapes as heralds of grief and warning, using obsolete images cut from old magazines and abandoned encyclopaedias. The Gods of Tiny Things thinks poetically and urgently about the current array of threats to life; the shift to the right across the political world, the tolls of colonialism, climate catastrophe, human profligacy; and conversely the dynamic, kaleidoscopic pleasures and desires of life itself, at all scales, in all its teeming, prancing, hectic, clamouring sensuality. I have been investigating the possibilities of splicing my fine arts practice with shared, performative, durational projects. Represented by Finkelstein Gallery, Melbourne

My name is Iluwanti Ken. I’m from Amata Community, on the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) Lands. I’m a Pitjantjatjara lady and an artist from Tjala Arts. I draw my father’s Tjukurpa (ancestral creation story), telling the story of walawulu ngunytju kukaku ananyi (mother eagles going hunting) in my country in Watarru. This story is for me and for the children and all the future generations. Our creative ideas arise from thinking about how we can tell our Tjukurpa stories in lots of different ways. My drawings are of the walawuru (eagles) and the lessons that Anangu mothers can learn from these birds. The walawuru protect their young, make shelters, building beds for them and feeding their babies. Anangu mothers act in the same way, protecting their children from danger. Represented by Tjala Arts, APY Lands, South Australia

MARTIN KING

ILONA KISS

BARBIE KJAR

b. 1957, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1969, Zurich, Switzerland; arrived Australia 2020 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1957, Burnie, Tasmania Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

graphite, oilstick on drafting film, watercolour and pigment on paper 125.0 x 185.0 cm

Calypso 2018

wood lithographs on paper 76.0 x 112.0 cm

Unnatural history is part of a series of work that fuses aspects and representations of Australian landscape and art history. Images from early colonial depictions of flora and fauna, including Eugene von Guérard, reappear alongside Albrecht Dürer as contemporary visions of a mixed-up world. History is always embedded with falsities masquerading as truths. Unnatural history represents an imaginative counterpoint to the idea of ‘natural history’.

My figurative work hovers in a dream-like state between the ideal and the imaginary, the past and the present. I am not interested in representation, but in the idea of the intangible, and the intention to evoke a peculiar familiarity.

Unnatural history 2019

Represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne and King Street Gallery on William, Sydney

pencil on board on paper

Backbone 2020

65.0 x 50.0 cm

I am attracted to those times of the day when things shift: you could call it the transition between dreaming and waking, when real memories get scrambled up with imagination. The state of ‘neither here nor there’ fascinates me and I sometimes feel like a ghost hunter, catching the invisible and bringing it to the surface through drawing and painting. I build on the feelings left behind after a dream – experiences that can often linger like a taste in the mouth.

The work Backbone is a dyptich exploring ideas of strength. The backbone is a site of strength, protection and vulnerability. I referred to common phrases like ‘turn your back’; ‘he/she has backbone’. I worked with dancer Mason Kelly and asked him to interpret strength and vulnerability through dance movement. I initially worked on drawings in the studio and then translated the images into wood lithographs. Represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne & Sydney

Represented by PAPER Gallery Manchester, United Kingdom

JENNA LEE

DANE LOVETT

CHIPS MACKINOLTY

b. 1992, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Language group/s: Larrakia, Wardaman and Karajarri Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1984, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1954, Morwell, Victoria Lives and works in Alice Springs, Northern Territory

Into the Unknown 2020

Colonial Virus Collection 2020

gouache on paper 119.0 x 88.0 cm

digital print on paper 45.0 x 100.0 cm

This painting features a book I found at a vintage market years ago and nail polish left in my studio by a studio mate. I have always been drawn to the typography on this old Reader’s Digest and love the cliché title. My work deals broadly with still life and recontextualising commonly used painting tropes and imagery. Recently this title has come to represent the pervasive message in media and a very universal feeling that we are all faced with. So far during lockdown, I’ve painted my nails three times.

Ironically the first case of COVID-19 in Australia was notified on 25 January, the same date Arthur Phillip arrived at Port Jackson and the day before they landed and established British hegemony ... the beginning of super spreading ...

re/verse/d 2020 handmade paper from pages of colonial texts, Larrakia ochre, synthetic polymer paint, PVA glue 20.0 x 35.0 x 40.0 cm We write the re-write. These vessels are created from deconstructed pages of a colonial text which feature derogatory and harmful stereotypes of First Nations people. I aim to take this narrative, these hurtful words and reconstruct them into story of personal and cultural resilience, beauty and strength. The collection of objects presents the result of a transformative process of analysis, deconstruction and reconstruction where I physically translate the book into a story of my own. The vessels have been adorned with a Larrakia ochre, using our own storytelling medium to re-write our own representation, taking back a story which was always ours to tell.

Represented by STATION, Melbourne

With the 250th anniversary of Cook this year, the continuing echoes of Colonial Virus, and the current pandemic threatening Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, are shockingly obvious … … and these threats continue. Represented by Damien Minton Presents, Sydney

LAITH MCGREGOR

NOEL MCKENNA

ROMA MCLAUGHLIN

b. 1977, Sunshine Coast, Queensland Lives and works in Byron Bay, New South Wales

b. 1956, Brisbane, Queensland Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

b. 1954, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Ode 2020

Dog Jumping 2018

Crosscurrent 2020

ink on paper 21.6 x 27.9 cm

papercut White Fabriano 120gsm acid free paper 92.0 x 71.0 cm

Dog Jumping is part of my ongoing exploration of the domestic pet as a subject from a psychological and visual perspective.

I am a papercut artist. This papercut is from an ongoing series about the Victorian coastal environment of Australia. I regularly visit the southern coast to enjoy the regenerative powers of the sea. Studying the tidal ebb and flow of waves and the surf through my papercuts, I am in awe of the sea’s majestic energy and beauty. I also consider the future of our oceans, as I observe the tides rising and rapid erosion of the coastline.

pencil on paper 180.0 x 153.0 cm

Ode is an outcome of my ongoing research to understand the complexity of the human experience and my place within it. The work continues my investigation into modes of portraiture and relates to observations made while living in isolation. I have drawn directly from a series of collages I was making daily during these unprecedented times. An abstracted face dominates the composition – a sculptural head positioned on its side and an upside down water jug make the eyes, negative space the nose and a single row of a chess board creates a gap tooth grin. The objects are familiar yet simultaneously ambiguous, each holding significant meaning. The work reflects my thoughts on life, death and the inbetween. It lends itself to the intuitive and acts on the subconscious, sitting in a grey area between fiction and nonfiction. Ode could be viewed as a self-portrait of sorts, while also embodying an abstracted surreal landscape.

Represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne and Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney

To make my images, I use a single sheet of paper and a scalpel to cut out shapes to create patterning. When mounted into a box frame, these papercuts of the sea cast mysterious soft shadows, while the white of the paper gives the effect of light on water.

Represented by STATION, Melbourne 99

TODD MCMILLAN

FIONA MCMONAGLE

VERA MÖLLER

b. 1979, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

b. 1977, Letterkenny, Ireland; arrived Australia 1977 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1955, Bremen, Germany; arrived Australia 1986 Lives and works in Flinders, Victoria

watercolour on cotton watercolour paper, on plywood and epoxy 135.0 x 97.0 cm

Rachel Meghan Markle 2020

memoriama 2019

watercolour, ink and gouache on paper 157.0 x 115.0 cm

ink, gouache, watercolour and acrylic on paper 142.0 x 625.0 cm

Todd McMillan’s practice returns repeatedly to images of the sea and the sky. While these sites of the sublime pay homage to the favourite subjects of the Romantic tradition, McMillan’s depictions of nature are imbued with a more contemporary melancholy, one that wrestles with existential risk and the possible endgame humanity now faces. Echoing Ruskin’s The Storm-Cloud of the 19th Century, McMillan’s storm paintings in Preparations for Rain (2018) and his ongoing series Lull act as pensive records and melancholic provocations that implore us to reconsider our engagement with, and impact upon, the world.

Commonly referred to as The culture of the people, popular culture (also mass culture and pop culture) is defined as based on the tastes of ordinary people rather than an educated elite. Though the complexities of such a wide-reaching cultural phenomenon are far greater than education and class divides. As such, popular culture is generally recognised by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, or objects dominant or prevalent in a society at a given point in time.

My training as a biologist has conceptually underpinned my creative practice for many years. In recent years I have worked extensively with themes and subjects surrounding marine environments, specifically the Great Barrier Reef and the Victorian coast near my home in Flinders.

Lull (viii) 2019

Represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney

This recent body of work ‘Rachel Meghan Markle’ speaks to the complexity and conflict via the portrayal of women in pop culture. Challenging us to question how we feel about powerful independent women, as well as exploring the way in which these portrayals may be viewed as either strengthening or marginalising. Represented by Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide

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An extraordinary range of marine macro and micro species are inhabiting the strong currents of Western Port. Amongst a plethora of swaying algae, seaweeds and sea grasses exist vast populations of soft corals, nudibranchs and other marine invertebrates and creatures. This is an alien world in never ending flux, where elastic and translucent forms are suspended by the fluids in the water column. Visual phenomena such as opalescence, bioluminescence or phosphorescence, characteristic of some of these organisms, as well as often flamboyant colours contribute to the surreal appearance of these shimmering underwater spaces. Represented by Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

RAY MONDE

KENT MORRIS

TOM O’HERN

b. 1971, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Braidwood, New South Wales

b. 1964, Townsville, Queensland Language group: Barkindji Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1985, Burnie, Tasmania Lives and works in Hobart, Tasmania

As the world falls apart, I am far from home 2020 painted magazine paper and collage on Arches paper 76.0 x 56.0 cm

Soon after visiting the Seattle Asian Art Museum, the world shut down as it succumbed to the novel coronavirus. I found myself isolated in a strange city, needing to hunker down for an indefinite period of time. I thought a lot about the Chinese landscapes I saw in the museum and how the figures in the landscape were tiny specs, dwarfed by what was happening around them. This work is a direct response to the global pandemic, feelings of loss, isolation and a desperate longing for my home in the country, sheltered from the horrors of the world. This work evokes my feelings of the time, people dying on the streets, the shuttered city and the light on the hill, out of reach, calling me home. Represented by Michael Reid, Murrurundi, New South Wales

Barkindji Blue Sky - Ancestral Connections #1 2018

Drawings I made in Queenstown (the Tasmanian one not the New Zealand one) 2020

giclee print on paper 110.0 x 160.0 cm

synthetic polymer paint on paper 256.0 x 297.0 cm

My art practice reveals the continuing presence and patterns of Aboriginal history, culture and knowledge in the contemporary Australian landscape.

Drawings I made in Queenstown (the Tasmanian one not the New Zealand one).

The Barkindji Blue Sky - Ancestral Connections series is based on my observations of kiinki (Corellas) as they flew around and perched on the dishes of the large telecommunications tower in the centre of Bourke, New South Wales, during a family reunion on my ancestral homeland. The kiinki embody an ancient ancestral constellation story about two sisters called kiinki’ngulu, the two Corellas in the sky, representing ongoing cultural links to Indigenous deep time knowledge.

I have a suitcase that perfectly fits my sketch book, my favourite pen and two beers.

Barkindji Blue Sky - Ancestral Connections manipulates technological structures and nature into new forms that reflect Indigenous and western knowledge systems merging together. My artworks are constructed from a single photograph.

Eighty of the better drawings I made while on residency at Q Bank Gallery.

I made these drawings while lugging around my suitcase, dodging snakes, exploring ghost towns, getting caught in the rain, covered in leaches, walking over naked mountains, breaking into old mine sites and generally exploring Queenie. There’s no trees on the mountains but there will be one day. Represented by Q Bank Gallery, Queenstown, Tasmania

Represented by Vivien Anderson Gallery, Melbourne 101

BECC ORSZÁG

DAVID PALLISER

LOUISE PARAMOR

b. 1986, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1960, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Fortitude 2018

Trance 2020

b. 1964, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

graphite pencil on paper in unique frame 40.0 x 30.0 cm

ink, conté crayon, gouache, collage on paper 112.0 x 115.0 cm (six sheets)

Pretty Green 2018

I explore the fine line between Utopic and Dystopic ideals by investigating political, religious and social belief systems, drawing upon an interest in the universal longing for a heaven or utopic land, addressing man’s inherent need to be lead and belong, to idolise and revere, and the inevitable shaping of us as individuals and a society.

Make the rhythm with abrupt things just being there

Pretty Green is a hanging sculpture made from archival paper. The ‘honeycomb’ structure is built from many layers of paper, joined by a system of glue lines. Once cut into shape and pulled 360 degrees around a central axis, the paper forms a voluminous object. It is a technique I developed studying paper decorations. My first series of paper sculptures was made specifically for the interior of a Neo-Baroque palace, Schloss Pillnitz, in East Germany, and featured wide-skirted, fountain-like structures, hanging chandeliers, and enormous spreading fans, which resonated with the richly decorative historic interior. For my recent National Gallery of Victoria exhibition, Palace of the Republic, I created monumental paper sculptures based on colourful plastic assemblages. Visitors moved through the space as if through a garden; the mood both festive and euphoric. Pretty Green is a continuation of this series.

My drawings are primarily an investigation into sacred space and religious experience. Though meticulously rendered, Fortitude remains obscure and confounding in its unresolved narrative, presenting an idyllic yet perplexing world in which the profound coexists with the perturbed. By removing figures and landscapes from the safety of their original contexts, I create dissected, re-imagined, illusionary realms that teeter on the edge of reality. This act of manipulation and appropriation is a comment on the fallibility and malleability of our memories and questions the validity of official histories and widely accepted truths. 102

Transform continually Find your own found object Move through space in a broken bus A cohesive space for a disjointed composition Go into a trance Suspend Play squash then chess Represented by Jacob Hoerner Galleries

paper and fibreboard 215.0 x 130.0 x 130.0 cm

Represented by Finkelstein Gallery, Melbourne

HUBERT PAREROULTJA

RILEY PAYNE

TOM POLO

b. 1952, Alice Springs, Northern Territory Language group: Luritja, Western Aranda Lives and works in Hermannsburg (Ntaria), Northern Territory

b. 1979, Upper Ferntree Gully, Victoria Lives and works in New York, United States of America

b. 1985, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

Twenty Twenty 2020

soft shield 2020

pencil and coloured pencil on paper 42.0 x 35.0 cm

acrylic, watercolour and graphite on paper 112.0 x 76.0 cm

My work has always been about investigating language and image, and how both can be manipulated and re-interpreted depending on context and combination. However this work was made in a seemingly brand new world, early-mid quarantine – a world where language isn’t always trusted, truth isn’t necessarily truth, and images come at such a break neck speed that grasping their importance can feel desperate, hopeful and vital all at the same time. In the past I have relied on a more subversive style of humour to play with language and image, but this work (and time) felt like they required a slower and simpler statement – though one not without dual meanings. I aimed to make a work that captured some of the conflicting feelings of the moment; something hopeful, something confusing, an order from an outside source, an internal directive.

In my painting practice, I depict figures in gestural modes of transformation or theatrical poses; these personas are stand-ins for emotional or psychological states of being. In soft shield, 2020, I’ve used waterbased paint in thin washes on damp paper, as well as flat colour, to create a tension within this performative body and the space it occupies.

West of Haast Bluff / Ikuntji, near Mt Liebig / Watiyawanu, NT 2020 watercolour on watercolour paper 30.0 x 100.0 cm I painted this country as it’s my Mother’s father’s dreaming. This dreaming is called Emu dreaming. The story goes that the emu dreaming started at Merrina Bluff and travelled through Mt Leibig all the way to west. When the Emu travels to another place the dreaming (Jukupa) and the stories then change that place, the language changes everything changes, it’s like passing on the baton. The Emu could even take the form of a man or a woman. Represented by Iltja Ntjarra/Many Hands Art Centre, Alice Springs

The figure is split between two sheets of paper – the top of the head separated almost like a helmet from its abstract, costumed body. Two gestural arms are raised above in anticipation or perhaps protection; there is a sense we’re unaware of what’s to come, as we move in an unknown future. Represented by STATION, Melbourne and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney

Represented by Reading Room, Melbourne

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PATRICK POUND

LINDA PUNA

CAMERON ROBBINS

b. 1962, Auckland, New Zealand; arrived Australia 1989 Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1974, Mimili, South Australia Language group: Pitjantjatjara Lives and works in Mimili, South Australia

b. 1963, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Castlemaine, Victoria

Joinery 2018

Ngayuku Ngura 2020

MON MON 24 hrs/Rain Fronts 2019

photo collage 65.0 x 50.0 cm

unique screen print on paper with ink alterations 66.0 x 110.0 cm

titanium white ink on Magnani paper 56.0 x 76.0 cm

I am an artist working with photography and the archive. I take up where photographers leave off.

I started painting a long time ago, when I was staying on the homelands with my family. The women would make art every day, carving punu (wooden sculptures). My paintings are those same designs I learned about then.

On a residency at Mon Mon/ Police Point in May 2019, I was inspired by the stormy night skies to make a series of wind drawings, mechanically drawn with random elements and orbital in motion. I used titanium white pen on black Magnani watercolour paper, suggesting the night sky and the creation of elements in the powerful forces of the black hole.

To collect is to gather your thoughts through things. My work repurposes discarded family snaps, images from defunct newspaper archives and those dissembled from the cinema machine. The submitted work: Joinery is typical in that it finds chance alignments in two randomly discarded records. All of my photographs are sourced on eBay. The internet is an enormous unhinged album. Assembling vast photo collections under themes and titles as diverse as ‘Photography and air’ and ‘Air heading right’, to ‘People who look dead but probably aren’t’, I treat the photo-collection as a medium and position the world as a puzzle. My work seems to say: if only we could find all the pieces we might solve that puzzle. It’s a folly of course. Represented by STATION, Melbourne and Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney

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I paint what I see: apu munu puli (rocks and hills), punu (trees), kapi tjukurla (water holes). I also paint maku tjukurpa (witchetty grub stories) from around Antara. This is what I learned from my aunties, my mother and my grandmother. I learned about these stories watching them make punu and talk about it. That’s why I always like to include punu (trees) in my paintings, they are the main one. They are the old way for stories to travel. Today I paint in kutjupa way (different) to everyone else. For this work, I’ve worked on paper and learnt about screenprinting, using colour pulka, rikina way (good looking)! Represented by Mimili Maku Arts, South Australia

This drawing was created outdoors over 24 hours, with a fresh wind and several rain fronts affecting the marks and textures, with one of my winddriven drawing instruments. The first direct imaging of a black hole in the centre of galaxy M87, about 50 million light years away, was created in 2019 by a global scientific team lead by scientist Katie Bouman, doctoral fellow at Harvard University. A black hole is an immense whirlpool, where everything falling in is superheated from the friction, beyond white-hot into the realm of X-rays. The centre is so dense that light becomes trapped – forever invisible. Represented by MARS Gallery, Melbourne

BRIAN ROBINSON

ANNIKA ROMEYN

PIP RYAN

b. 1973, Thursday Island (Waiben), Queensland (Torres Strait) Language group: Kala Lagaw Ya Lives and works in Cairns, Queensland

b. 1986, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory Lives and works in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

b. 1984, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Endurance 5 2019

watercolour, gouache, 22k gold leaf, pencil on paper 76.0 x 112.0 cm

Uncharted: Astrolabe and Zelee in Kulkalgal country 2020

watercolour monotype on paper 228.0 x 168.0 cm

Hook, Line and Sinker 2019

linocut on paper 100.0 x 188.0 cm The French vessels Astrolabe and Zelee carried Dumont d’Urville and his crew on an expedition through the Torres Strait in 1840. Sailing down a false passage in the reef, the expedition team soon became stranded on Warrior Reef just to the north of Tudu on 1st June. As the ships floundered, the Kulkalgal flocked onto the reef and from afar were watching the stranded corvettes. The following day the islanders of Tudu wasted no time in visiting the ships by walking along the reef. It took eight days before the ships were able to sail out of the channel. By the 1840s, more than 200 years after the first recorded European voyage to the region, Torres Strait Islanders were actively participating as brokers with Europeans. As trade constituted such an essential component of Torres Strait Island economies, Islanders quickly embarked upon the exchange of goods with Europeans. Represented by Mossenson Galleries, Melbourne

My work aims to convey the immersive and restorative experience of being in the landscape. Endurance 5 was inspired by Guerilla Bay, South Coast New South Wales (Yuin Country) – a beautiful place intertwined with memories of Summer 2016/17, the last shared with my Mum. In revisiting and reimagining such a powerful site from the physical and temporal distance of my Canberra studio, the colour blue suggested a sense of memory and emotion. The fluidity of the watercolour monotype medium directed the atmosphere of the work, while the drips came to signify a release, disrupting the otherwise carefully rendered environment and breaking the horizon to link sea and sky. The rock formations of Guerilla Bay are some of the oldest on the east coast of Australia. Frédéric Gros said ‘Walking in nature gives you a feeling of duration that exceeds your own existence.’ Represented by Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne

My practice explores humour, irony and the absurd through drawing, sculpture, installation, and video. I draw from a multitude of sources including myths, imaginary childhood creatures, personal memories, family history and other-worldly beasts, exploring the junction between the personal and the imagined world. Hook, Line and Sinker presents a central figure in a state of transition; changing from human to fish, hooked and traumatised, caught between an eel and a colourful dolphin, being pulled apart. I grew up on the Mornington Peninsula, as a child I have many memories of fishing with my family in Western Port Bay. My Dad was an avid fisherman, however he never had much luck. When he did catch a fish, it was so traumatic my sisters and I ended up wailing so much he threw it back in. This work is a playful, surreal re-imagining of these memories.

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WENDY SHARPE

KYLIE STILLMAN

JACQUI STOCKDALE

b. 1960, Sydney, New South Wales Lives and works in Sydney, New South Wales

b. 1975, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1968, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Ladders to the Sky 2018

Mud Print 2020

The Borning Son 2020

gouache on folding book 30.0 x 171.0 cm

hand-cut books and timber base 23.0 x 23.0 x 14.0 cm

ink, joss paper, streamers, magazine bits, reconstructed photograph, gold foil on archival paper 90.0 x 65.0 cm (sheet)

This work explores the process of creativity – the origins and stimuli, the journey. It taps into the unconscious, like a waking dream (an involuntary dream occurring while a person is awake), relationships, connections, human nature, problems, and fragments of identity. I have always been interested in the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep: the ‘hypnagogic state’ of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. It is a vivid, dream-like sensation that an individual hears, sees or feels. During hypnagogia, the brain is more fluid and open to making connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, which is what makes it so conducive to creative problem solving.

Mud Print explores the textural quality of paperback books, and draws a quiet parallel between leaves in nature and the leaves of a book, both of which contain stories – and sometimes absences – that can be read.

My art practice includes theatrical photography, painting, drawing, collage, sculpture and performance. Through my work I explore dominant narratives of Australian folklore, mythology, heritage and the transformative nature of ritual in society. In contrast to the complexities of producing staged photographs and paintings, my collages, such as this one, are made spontaneously and enable me to harness the fluidity and freedom of the subconscious to conjure up new stories.

Represented by King Street Gallery on William, Sydney

Well known for her poetic carved book sculptures, Stillman likens the concepts behind her making to intaglio printmaking processes, in which the forms that are etched into a metal plate hold the ink from which a printed image is pulled. As she carves into the edges of the books, the dark ink of the printed pages and shadows are revealed to provide the tonality and form to the overall image. In this instance the image is that of a leaf pattern reproduced as a powdered red grime mark. The result of a dust storm 500 kilometres away, driven by fierce winds before falling from the sky during a deluge of rain, the aftermath of extreme weather during summer 2020. Represented by Utopia Art Sydney

The Borning Son has been 19 years in the making. Here I have combined elements from two pre-existing works, The Unborn Child, 2001, made from Chinese joss paper, and a portrait of my son wearing a Halloween mask, titled El Niño, 2012. The title means ‘the boy’ in Spanish but is also a play on words referring to El Niño, the destructive climate phenomenon of the same name. This new image speaks to me of human longing, mortality, dreams, deities, desires and fulfilment. Represented by OLSEN Gallery, Sydney

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MARINA STROCCHI

HIROMI TANGO

HOSSEIN VALAMANESH

b. 1961, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Alice Springs, Northern Territory

b. 1976, Osaka, Japan; arrived Australia 1998 Lives and works in Tweed Heads, New South Wales

b. 1949, Tehran, Iran; arrived Australia 1973 Lives and works in Adelaide, South Australia

acrylic on paper 60.0 x 80.0 cm

Fragile Hope 2019

Tokamachi Samue 2018

wax colour pencil on archival paper 76.0 x 168.0 cm

paper maps on cotton backing 108.0 x 78.0 x 3.0 cm

My work is an intuitive response to nature. I attempt to activate the feeling of being in the landscape, deconstructing and anthropomorphising the landscape, challenging the human-centred viewpoint of nature whilst referencing restorative care and reparative action. Through layering textured marks, I create the irregularities and patterns of a world where nature is the major stakeholder. The tension between the interdependent line work and form creates the counterpoint for the structure and colour in my paintings. I try to create a form of ‘spacial’ harmony: a place of refuge, as nature does. A fundamental aspect of my work is responding to the brilliant glare of the Australian light and its effect on land formations. This work is part of a series which were inspired by Kangaroo Valley, New South Wales.

The circle is a recurring theme in healing across many cultures. A symbol of the cycle of life, rebirth, regeneration and the inter-relatedness of things, the circle focuses us inward while at the same time connecting everyone around us. Circle drawing has become a focus as part of my ongoing interest in nature/nurture. As I have worked with this form, I have become fascinated with the energy generated by the meditative act of circle drawing.

Before Google, paper maps were the way we could navigate our way when we travelled. As artists we travel for our work attending exhibitions and residencies and in mid-2018 I travelled to Japan to participate in the Echigo-Tsumari Triennial. For this occasion I made Tokamachi Samue, 2018.

The Escarpment KV V 2018

Represented by Australian Galleries, Melbourne & Sydney and Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane

Working with the healing colour palette, creating these drawings evokes a sense of calm and positivity. Through this series, I continue to explore the potential for circle drawing to build resilience within myself. the heart’s ear listens carefully, deeply, sadly feeling pain and fear healing circles swirl each shape embodying hope although faint at first the heart grows stronger grey warms to pink, touched by love hope begins to grow Represented by Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney

Samue were traditionally worn as work clothing by Buddhist monks and are nowadays worn as casual wear. This work can be seen as a self-portrait, the artist becoming the Samue and wearing the landscape. I have used maps on a number of occasions over the past 20 years. For this work I have used two maps of the Tokomachi region (adhered to cotton backing), one as the background and the other to make the Samue using dressmaking methods in my size. The two elements are positioned in a way that one can follow the road from the background to the clothing. Represented by GAGPROJECTS, Adelaide

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LISA WAUP

ROSIE WEISS

REGINA WILSON

b. 1971, Melbourne, Victoria Language group: Gunditjmara Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

b. 1958, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Capel Sound, Victoria

Many Hands 2020

pencil, Chinese and pigmented ink on Arches paper 76.0 x 56.0 cm

b. 1948, Peppimenarti, Northern Territory Language Groups: MarithielNgan’gikurungurr Lives and works in Peppimenarti, Northern Territory

mixed materials 63.0 x 73.0 x 26.0 cm

Targets 2020

Wupun (sun mat) 2020 etching and silkscreen print on paper 85.0 x 87.0 cm

My practice is an ongoing exploration of family, history, Country and their placement in time. I get inspiration from my mothers, Many Hands is an ode to the strength of my matrilineal line – both ancestral connections and through my upbringing. This piece is a genogram detailing three generations, from my mother, birth mother and myself – this also includes the umbilical relation of my siblings and also my three children. The copper cords detail inherited connection delivered and lost, yet forever unbroken. The shadows cast from the three figures alludes to the continuation of family history and connections of strength through ancestral presence – guiding in times of doubt, feeling comforted when alone and lost, celebrating in life’s achievements. Many Hands reflects the ideals that it takes a tribe to raise a child, who are proud with a strong connection to their history, and a sense of belonging and strength.

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In March 2020 I travelled through the East Gippsland fire zone from Cape Conran to Goongerah and then up into the intact remnant old growth forest to walk amongst the giant trees. After the silent burnt landscape where nothing stirred it was a shocking contrast. I collected burnt plant remnants, many of them have since turned into charcoal from the intensity of the fires. This work draws upon my plant collection, the Xanthorrhoea silhouette from the Ash Wednesday fire, found up behind Urquhart Bluff near Lorne, the big stick from a fire at my parent’s house and the lower form, from somewhere on the road to Goongerah. We hear about emissions targets, climate percentages, hopeful and fearful targets and tipping points – in this work I’ve tried to make sense of it all, to find some kind of beauty and balance whilst acknowledging the urgency of the situation.

This print on paper was created in collaboration with master printmaker Basil Hall. Wilson’s image represents the wupun (sun mat weaving), which is traditionally woven with yerrgi (pandanus spiralis), merrepen (sand palm) and naturally derived colours by the women of Peppimenarti for decorative use. The subject matter of Wilson’s works is often based around the practice of weaving fibre art, and stems directly from her exceptional skills as a master weaver. Regina won the General Painting category of the Telstra National Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in 2003. Her work is included in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, The British Museum and numerous private and corporate collections in Australia and overseas. Represented by Durrmu Arts Aboriginal Corporation, Northern Territory

JUDITH WRIGHT

HEIDI YARDLEY

b. 1945, Brisbane, Queensland Lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland

b. 1975, Melbourne, Victoria Lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria

Sightlines [6] 2019

Strangers to ourselves 2020

acrylic on Japanese paper 100.0 x 100.0 cm

charcoal on primed paper 76.0 x 56.0 cm

I create paintings, drawings, videos and installations, often sustaining dialogues between different media. I am drawn to themes such as the vulnerability and impermanence of life, the body and its relationship – either physical or psychological – to other animate and inanimate presences, as well as the fluidity between the conscious and unconscious mind.

My work draws from an archive of collected images, mainly from the 1960s and 70s. Through an intuitive process, I create imaginative compositions based on memory and personal, introspective scenes. I use collage to create source material for my works on paper. I replicate these collages in detailed charcoal drawings on hand-painted paper. This drawing explores the human connection to nature through contemplation of a bird. The positioning of the bird in the absence of a human face creates the illusion of a bird head akin to a Venetian mask. This relates to my interest in mythology and human/animal hybrids.

Sightlines [6], 2019, conjures a bewitched place of ancient tales, gardens and childhood. About this series of works, Michele Helmrich writes: ‘The great waxed sheets of Japanese paper, scaled to the artist’s reach, glow with metallic paint like pages of a manuscript or illustrated story book … trees whose hanging fruit are outlined in the golden iris of an eye, command attention …’ Helmrich continues, ‘[Wright] has also revealed her personal tragedy, the loss of an infant daughter. Beneath the joy, sense of play and the theatrical, we may perceive a darker shadowland, a memorial, even.’

Represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne

Represented by Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne 109

Note to reader: All artwork titles are printed as submitted by the artists. Photography credits: All photos have been provided by the artists unless otherwise stated. 110

2020 National Works on Paper A Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery exhibition 5 December 2020 – 21 February 2021 2020 NWOP judges: Louise Tegart, Director Art Gallery of Ballarat; Gina Mobayed, Director Goulburn Regional Art Gallery; Danny Lacy, Artistic Director / Senior Curator Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. Collections Curator: Narelle Russo Registrars: Angie Taylor & Ainsley Gowing Marketing and Publication Coordinator: Rowena Wiseman Visitor Operations & Gallery Support: Elisabeth Jones Public Programs Coordinator: Jane German Education Officer: Jill Anderson Exhibition support: Marni Howard, Sunny Scott, Paul Nuttney (ExhibitOne) Publicity: Zilla & Brook Design: Linton Design Printing: Blue Star Print ISBN: 978-0-6481941-7-0 Edition: 2020 Print run: 500 © The authors and the Mornington Peninsula Shire, 2020

Authorised by Manager, Libraries, Arts and Culture, Mornington Peninsula Shire, Marine Parade Hastings

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