“My homeland of Tasmania is a natural setting for landscape photography. The untouched temperate rain-forests, world heritage areas and coastal scenery is simply breathtaking. A plethora of famous walking tracks, well-formed and sometimes not well known within the island, lead to locations perfect for capturing images that I try to showcase with my photography.”
– Samuel Allen
An exhibition of works on paper, including printmaking, photography, drawing and collage. Intimate portraits show each plant, or plant part, as something precious and intriguing. The works emphasise form and pattern and the diversity of shapes and designs found in nature. They celebrate the mysterious nature of plants, and draw the viewer into the inner reaches of other organisms which may sometimes seem alien and sometimes familiar.
Anna Brooks has a great love of plants. This began when she was a child roaming around in bushland on the family farm, continued through a degree in Botany, and years of bushwalking in many wonderful places. Brooks completed her Honours in Fine Arts in 2021. Almost all of her art is about the natural world.
“Life draws : squiggles, paw-prints, and traces – imprints of brachiopod shells from hundreds of millions of years ago in the mudstone of our garden. Less fixed are the flight-lines of insects and birds; harder to spot are the underground drawings of worms, roots, and billions of microscopic creatures. Life is everywhere, even in the darkest underwater. How it wriggles, squeezes out of tight spots, returns after disasters and thrives, or hangs by the thinnest of threads… fragile threads so easily cut: species lost, links severed.
We draw too : tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors drew with charcoal and ochre on rocks and in caves. Humans have drawn with enormous stone structures, and tiny shell beads, with feet leaving footprints and tracks like wallabies do. We continue to mark the world as we cut and build, dig and dredge. We remove mountain tops, re-route waterways, change everything… our marks getting bigger and bolder.
For me, drawing is mark-making and conversation, listening and responding with charcoal on paper, or tearing, scrumpling, wrapping, pinning. It’s a way of getting to know intimately, distilling the essence of something; a way to explore edges: animate|inanimate, animal-self|human-self. I draw upon life which has drawn me, which still draws me: not just the lines on my hands, but my whole way of being in the world, and what I cherish the most.”
– Marinelle Basson
Automatism
Through subconscious, automatic acts of creativity, l strive to express how one is able to visually put to canvas the subconscious visual reality that comes to mind without meticulous planning. Through brush strokes, this instant interpretation of the chaotic unconscious world explores the concept of automatism.
Serendipitous, coincidental expressionism
A coincidence is contrary to logos-centred rational thinking. This form of expression combined with automatism produces surprisingly serendipitous artistic results. Although I commence my artwork with a certain image or purpose in mind, I can’t help but accept the end result because it is a result of the convergence between the intentional and unintended.
Eastern calligraphy
Amongst the oriental style of brushstrokes, the calligraphy handwriting, which is called chaucer, is a tool where one communicates a clear linguistic message. The varied strength of the brushwork on the canvas however, results in an amazing pictorial image that can be left to further creative interpretation.
“When the three visual elements of Automatism, Serendipity and Eastern calligraphy are combined, I float colours, blend and permeate the paint on canvas, which draws out the contrast between primary and complementary colours.”
– Haetaek Choi, Hobart, September 2022
Opening Event
Friday 22 July 2022
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Working away from home, with kunanyi mountain in sight, Justine Wake’s exhibition focuses on the small things and the very big things of life, using painting, drawing and assemblage. Justine’s exhibitions often incorporate a playful and interactive body of work and in this exhibition there is a ‘busking wall’ taking up an entire wall of the gallery. The wall is covered in paintings and drawings of all sizes and mediums, giving you the chance to spend time considering what stands out and whether any of the works might have a use or meaning for you. If a work ‘lands’, just as a busking musician’s music might ‘land’, the work can be taken home at a price of your own choosing. Works on the busking wall can be marked with a red dot for collection later or removed and taken home on the day.
Justine is a family woman and psychotherapist who has been working in mental health for 22 years and in the field of art psychotherapy for over a decade. Justine has practised as a painter for even longer. The last seven years have seen a more focussed approach to art making for Justine with a number of residencies and solo exhibitions in Meanjin/Brisbane and in Naarm/Melbourne.
This exhibition is supported by Sailor Seeks Horse.
Justine Wake
Justine Wake is from Meanjin, Queensland and her recent Arts Residency at Salamanca Arts Centre has focussed on harvesting the crops grown from seeds planted over the past few years of her family life and work as a psychotherapist.
The majority of Justine’s art making is a response to ideas and experiences that run through her mind as she goes about daily life. In these reflections, she is often interested in the experience of being ‘betwixt and between’ – who do we become when we are in a space that has no context or a space that exists only due to being between two different states.
“I am in middle age now, an interesting kind of in between time. As a psychotherapist I also spend a lot of my working life in this space with people- supporting emergence from unwelcome or uncomfortable places in between. I am intuitively and also professionally comfortable inhabiting this realm. To explore this in my imagery, I am drawn to the metaphorical richness of colour, the botanical world, animals and the elements.”
– Justine Wake
A quirky gallery with perfect proportions, the Sidespace Gallery is the gallery of favour for artists wishing to exhibit contemporary work in the public domain.
The Sidespace Gallery is part of Salamanca Art Centre’s subsidised Access Galleries Program and is available to Salamanca Arts Centre Associate Members on the acceptance of an exhibition proposal.
Exhibitions
Salamanca Arts Centre Associate Members
$75 per Day / $334 per Week
All prices are inclusive of GST and are effective from 1 January 2025.
*Venue Hire Rates will increase as of 1 January 2026.
For details of 2026 Venue Hire Rates, please refer to the Sidespace Gallery Information Kit / Conditions of Hire (PDF)
Salamanca Arts Centre assesses applications for the Sidespace Gallery twice annually, with application rounds occurring in April and September each year, with Special Applications Round (in the event of a cancellation) if required.
**Applications for the 2026 Calendar + remaining dates in 2025 are now CLOSED**
Assessment are underway and we aim to contact all applicants with outcome in mid May 2025.
The Sidespace Gallery is almost fully booked until mid January 2026.
Only the following dates are available in 2025 are :
– Wednesday 15 October – Monday 10 November 2025 (27 x Days)
**Applications for the 2026 Calendar + remaining dates in 2025 are now CLOSED**
Assessment are underway and we aim to contact all applicants with outcome in mid May 2025.
If you would like to be notified when applications open for 2027 or if dates become available due to a cancellation, please sign up to our alert list.
This event is part of Winter Light 2022 and the Australian Antarctic Festival 2022 and is presented by Salamanca Arts Centre
11 – 28 August 2022
Tuesday – Sunday
11am – 4pm
Last Dance Orange Roughy depicts the final Australian voyage of the RSV Aurora Australis to the Antarctic continent. The Aurora Australis has been carrying expeditioners and resupply to Antarctica for over 30 years. This final voyage was special in many ways. It departed with COVID-19 just a whisper and returned to a fundamentally changed world. The extra protocols instituted on the ship in response to COVID-19 reinforced the interdependency and collaborative actions of such a tightly knit microcosm, already essential for survival in Antarctica, but with a renewed sense of urgency in the emerging emergency. At that time Antarctica became the last COVID-19 free continent and we had a duty to preserve that status.
Using laser and photogrammetry scans and ambisonic sound recordings of the ship, crew and expeditioners, Last Dance Orange Roughy presents a virtual experience depicting the intricate choreography of ship and expeditioners. Using an artistic rendering of the ship along with choreographed impressions of the crew and expeditioners, Last Dance Orange Roughy portrays the final voyage as an intricate dance sustaining life.
Last Dance Orange Roughy is an immersive visual and sonic feast of three-dimensional environments and spatial sound visualising and sonifying the last grand Antarctic dance of the Aurora Australis, crew and expeditioners. John McCormick and Adam Nash (Wild System) were the 2020 Australian Antarctic Arts Fellows on the final Australian voyage of the icebreaker Aurora Australis to the Antarctic continent.
Antarctic Art Fellows: John McCormick, Adam Nash
3D Artists: Casey Richardson, Casey Dalbo
Choreography: Kim Vincs, John McCormick
Dancers: Valentina Dillon, Wendy Feng
Ambisonic Sound: Adam Nash
Antarctic Arts Program: Sachie Yasuda, Tiffany Brooks
Drone Filming: Simon Payne, John McCormick
3D Stereo development: Joshua Reason
Ambisonic sound consultant: Simon Maisch
John and Adam would like to extend their thanks to all the crew and expeditioners aboard the final voyage of the RSV Aurora Australis to the Antarctic Continent.
Whilst the wearing of masks is not mandatory it is recommended in certain situations by Tasmanian Public Health. Masks will be available upon entering the venue for those patrons who would like one.
If you’re unwell, it is recommended that you stay at home, and we look forward to welcoming you at Salamanca Arts Centre another time.
John McCormick is a technology based artist with a major interest in movement. John is a lecturer and researcher at the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology where he investigates artistic practice in mixed reality environments, robotics, artificial intelligence and human movement. John has collaborated on works worldwide, including at ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Melbourne Festival, SIGGRAPH Asia, Ars Electronica Futurelab and Art Science Museum Singapore.
Adam Nash
Adam Nash is an artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer working in virtual environments and generative platforms. His work has been presented all over the world, including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, ZERO1SJ, the National Portrait Gallery and Venice Biennale. He is Associate Professor (Virtual Interior) in the Interior Design discipline, School of Architecture and Urban Design, RMIT University.
Consisting of paintings and a musical composition, Notation by Hann Pärssinen
is a loosely woven abstract diary of contemplation and dialogue with loved ones over a period of 5 years.
The paintings are figurative. Oil on canvas and timber.
when the world feels it has ended the equator is in prayer
with love
grief
continue
still like trees, living
under the one sun
The works have been a language in the dialogue with family, before and after the death of a parent in 2021.