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Opening Event
Thursday 16 March 2023
5:30pm – 7:30pm

An exhibition of contemporary mosaic works by Rachel Bremner, created to encourage the viewer to find personal meaning that resonates emotionally, without prompts, like listening to songs without words.

“From early childhood leading up to my life as a visual artist, I trained and performed as a professional violinist. I continue to be fascinated by the similarities, and the differences between the two forms of artistic expression.

I had never conceived of music as an art form that needed words to provide background or convey what I meant to express.

Expressing myself in words has never come easily to me, I can rarely find the right ones for my purpose, music was always a perfect medium for my intense sense of privacy. In music performance I could present my inner world to the audience, all my thoughts, reactions, emotions without having to describe the background story.

When I started to put my mosaic work out into the world, in contrast to music-making I struggled with the obligation in the art world to use words when presenting to an audience. I felt a growing conflict with the wordless immediacy with which I wanted to engage and how much words can interfere with that engagement.

I present this exhibition as an offering to the audience to pause, observe each work and examine emotional reactions in their own terms, with no titles, no accompanying prompts.”
– Rachel Bremner

Rachel Bremner. Song 20 (2022). Stone, venetian smalti. 30 x 30cm

Rachel Bremner. Song 3 (2021). Stone, smalti, shell, bone, ceramic, 24k gold. 30 x 30cm

Rachel Bremner. Song 6 (2021). Stone, 24K golds. 30 x 30cm

A pictorial journey through Hobart en plein air by Peter Rudd.

“My recent cityscapes depict the streets, buildings, parks and docks of Hobart. I like to paint outdoors because I am drawn to the colour of light at different times of day, and in different weather, and I want to translate my experience of looking at it into paint.

Painting these pictures has been my way of getting to know Hobart. I have chosen subjects which produce an emotional response in me, and which I feel express the charm of the city. I have especially enjoyed observing the layering of old and new architecture which can be seen in Hobart wherever one goes.”
– Peter Rudd

Peter Rudd. Houses by the Brooker Highway (detail) (2022).Oil on panel. 58cm x 50cm

Peter Rudd. A View through a Window on Macquarie Street (detail) (2022). Oil on cardboard. 44.5cm x 65.5cm

Peter Rudd. A View from Paviour Street, New Town (detail) (2021). Oil on panel. 41.5cm x 50cm

A window into the influence of the natural world on our urban experience through light and our perception of time.

The installation, In Passing by SAC Resident Artist Christian Little, thematically explores time and our collective perception of the natural environment as ‘other’ in the urban landscape through a site-specific investigation of Salamanca. Utilising photographic imagery based within a systematic process of recording spaces throughout Salamanca repeatedly across months, documenting the natural change of weather, bloom, and decay.

Born from time in studio observing light cascade through the window from the courtyard outside. This installation draws attention to those unintentional moments spent in passing, encouraging an awareness of the ambient presence of the environment in our lives. Constructed using translucent acrylic sheets and paper, the materials and composition echo the original window experience of the artist. This collaboration with natural light changes the viewer’s perception of the installation throughout time of day and climate. Whilst the ephemeral quality of the semi-translucent photographs benefits from multiple viewings from different perspectives and an acute observation of nature’s aesthetic influence. Ultimately, ‘In Passing’ encourages a more intentional relationship with the surrounding processes of nature in the urban environment.

Opening Event
Friday 3 February 2023
5:30pm 7:30pm

A whimsical, analogue, photographic reciprocation, along the river Seine, of the 1801 French voyage of exploration to Terra Australis and Van Diemens land led by Nicolas Baudin.
By SAC Resident Artist Phillip England.

“The French voyage of discovery, led by Nicolas Baudin to Australia, including van Diemens Land in 1801 produced some iconic artwork depicting the marine and terrestrial flora and fauna they saw, the coastlines they mapped and the First Nations people they met. The voyage departed from Le Havre, the mouth of the Seine River which flows through Paris. My 2021 UTAS Rosamund McCulloch studio residency at la Cité internationale des arts in Paris became an artistic reciprocation of this voyage; an antipodean search for signs of life on the Seine river and documentation of my exploration of the river as it moves through Paris and where it meets the sea at La Havre.

I used monochrome, medium format film, exposed in a lensless panoramic pinhole camera, at sites along the Seine in Paris and at its mouth at Le Havre to evoke the water colour panoramas of Australian coastlines produced by the Baudin voyage artists Lesueur and Petit. The long exposure times required in pinhole photography remove human figures from the landscape, evoking the legal travesty, Terra Nullius, which drove European occupation of Australia, an already occupied land.

While in Paris, during a one week residency in the Ithaque gallery/darkroom, I made silver-gelatin photographic prints from a selection of these pinhole panoramas.

I also used instant film photography (Polaroid) to produce a series of triptychs at locations along the Seine River and I employed bleach reversal chemistry on medium format film photographs to produce monochrome, medium format positive slides, which are exhibited individually in light boxes.

The works in Terra Nullius reflect two predominant themes in my practice: 1) how the materiality of analogue and antique-process photography alters the psychology of space in imagery and 2) finding constructive emotional responses to humanity’s loss of close connection to the natural world.”
– Phillip England

Phillip England. Île Saint-Louis, Paris (detail) (2021). Silver gelatin photograph from panoramic pinhole camera film negative. 12 x 36cm

Phillip England. Pinhole camera panoramas (various) (2021). Silver gelatin photographs from panoramic pinhole camera film negatives . 36 x 36cm

Phillip England. Untitled #2. Monochrome photographic transparency, LED lightbox. 30 x 30 x 5cm

Launch Event
Thursday 23 February 2023
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Vivi al Ago launches their AW23 Urba Collection

A capsule wardrobe of essential pieces that give form to the essence of urban living.
Masculine shapes are softened with feminine detailing.
The warmth of luxe wools, velvet, and the coolness of silk capture the feel of urban winter.
Classic black, the warmth of sandstone and the coolness of midnight, reflect the winter cityscape.
Inspired by classics and modern architectural minimalism.
The merging of simplicity and timeless quality.

Photographer : Claudia Smith.
Model : Abigail O’neill

Vale is a collection of paintings by Lorna Quinn, created after an experience with a mountain plain in the Central Highlands in 2020.

“As a tourist looking in from a designated viewing platform, I found pleasure in imagining living on the slopes of the mountain as a bat or a worm or as a gust of wind. At the same time, I felt a sense of pain at the remoteness of this vision of dwelling – an absolute separateness from it. These two feelings, of inhabiting, and of outsideness, tangled together in a sort of ache, a longing, that I decided to represent in paint. Using a combination of holiday snaps, memory, and invention back at home, I repetitively formed and reformed the hills that I could remember in careful experiments with colour, texture and shade.

Returning to the viewing platform two years later, I found that my impression of the place had shifted. The idea of the mountain scene had grown so complete in its absence that the real thing felt pale and diminished, the paintings more concrete.”
– Lorna Quinn

Lorna Quinn

Lorna Quinn is a Melbourne based artist, creating small-scale portraits of vegetation, rock, earth and sky. Her practice considers the triangular relationship between landscape, personal experience and painting.

Opening Event
Friday 17 February 2023
5:00pm – 7:00pm

Enter a gallery space transformed – by designers, using seaweed-derived products – into a ‘speculative vision of a future home’, where a regenerative relationship between humanity and earth (and seaweed) has blossomed.

It’s 2046 and a decade has passed since a society inspired by seaweed has taken to the seas. The roots stem back to Hobart and the innovation that started in the 2020s. It’s a place of refuge for those in the Pacific Islands who have lost their homes to rising seas and the changing climate. On the outskirts of the city are sustainable floating ‘pods’ inspired by the buoyant air sacs or pneumatocysts of the giant kelp. In the city the larger buildings are stretching above and below the surface. The lifeblood of these speculative homes is seaweed, once highly neglected, now essential to the daily life of humans and their hope for the regeneration of the ocean.

Transforming the gallery space into our speculative vision of a future home, Pneu invites visitors to enter the regenerative living space of 2046. Work from a desk made from seaweed that has sequestered C02 and anthropogenic nitrogen. Be bathed in the light of a lamp that has improved marine biodiversity. Host your friends at a dining table that has alleviated eutrophication and acidification. Look out of the porthole to share in our vision for the future, one surrounded and supported by seaweed.

Pneu is a speculative design installation about the future of the seaweed industry in Tasmania by three up-and-coming young designers. With practices ranging from architecture to furniture to marine biology and cinematography, the exhibition explores the potential of seaweed to reshape humanity’s relationship with our home, the planet Earth.

Rachel Vosila. Kelp Biopolymer Development (2022)

Conor-Castles Lynch. Concept Image (2021)

Pneu is part of the International Seaweed Symposium (ISS) and MONA FOMA 2023

Opening Event
Sunday 12 February 2023
6:00pm – 8:00PM
Exhibition to be opened by Lucienne Rickard (speeches at 6:30pm)

New paintings by Jane Flowers, furniture and sculpture by Ned Trewartha This joint exhibition examines the connection between the ‘Elements’ and ‘Shelter’. At sea amongst it, in an anchorage seeking it and ashore being comforted by it.

Jane Flowers

Maritime artist Jane Flowers loves to capture the many moods of our ocean and waterways and express the pleasure of being in, on or around the water.

Her new paintings express themes of sea and sky, wind and water, the shape of sail and the pleasures of beachcombing.

Jane Flowers loves to immerse herself in nature and has always vowed “I cannot paint what I haven’t seen, heard or felt on my skin.
Some may say that doing a couple of Melbourne to Hobart Westcoasters and a Sydney Hobart yacht race may be taking things to extreme…There is no doubt that many of her seascapes are inspired by being offshore and experiencing nature’s elements at their best. At the same time much of her work offers shore based vistas of calm reflection admiring Tasmania’s beauty in its quiet and nurturing stillness.”

Ned Trewartha

Ned Trewartha is a traditional wooden boat builder and furniture designer/maker.

He is well known for his clinker dinghies handcrafted from select Tasmanian timbers, building only a few a year now. More of his time is spent creating furniture, and when time allows small sculptures and ukuleles.

He is passionate about the sustainable use of Tasmanian timbers and believes they are unique and precious and should be treated with great respect. He carefully selects for each individual project to minimise waste. He does not like waste. His small sculptures are made from offcuts from the boatbuilding process.

Ned uses old recycled timber from wherever and whenever he can and cannot understand how these aged timbers with so much character can be discarded as no longer useful. The hard won patina of age should be celebrated not trashed, and he is not afraid to show off those battle scars and what some may see as faults, rather adhering to the concept of ‘wabi sabi’.

Some of Ned’s furniture has a sculptural element but always maintains form and an honest functionality.

He feels absolutely privileged to be able to work with timbers such as Huon Pine everyday.

His workshop/gallery/home is in Woodbridge on the beautiful D’Entrecasteaux Channel.

Opening Event
Friday 3 February 2023
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Layers of monochrome became earth, sky, abstracted fields, wheat and grass twisted, flattened and forced – a changed landscape. From Nina Keri‘s psyche comes images of Ukraine as the breadbasket. Food, sustenance, life – threatened again by war. Borderland consists of eight works painted in heartfelt response to Ukraine.

“For several years the theme of my artwork has been my maternal family history – of life in Ukraine before and during the Second World War. Specifically, the stories from my Russian Grandma. I have shaped her stories into forms that are carriers of a deep family narrative of survival and continuation despite the destruction of war. Part of me has always experienced Ukraine through my Grandma’s stories. It is an almost fairy tale place in my psyche. In my mind’s eye I see the farm, the many creatures that shared the life of the family, horses, cattle, pigeons, rabbits, a pet fox and a pet wolf, the great expanse of Steppe. green and verdant, where Grandma would ride. But as with all fairy tales, there is darkness and evil. I also see the cattle train taking my grandmother away, and her beloved uncle running after it. It’s a real place, but I have never been there. Yet in my DNA lies the deep rich soil, maybe alongside bits of broken china, rusty nails and animal bones. To see this world of my imagination down the barrel of a soldier’s gun, uploaded to tiktok, is almost indescribable for me.

On the 24th of February 2022, to my shock and disbelief, Russia invade Ukraine. Four days into the war I started painting without concept, in a cathartic state, to release my mental and emotional anguish. Layers of monochrome became earth and sky, abstracted fields, wheat and grass that’s twisted, flattened and forced – a changed landscape. From deep in my psyche comes images of Ukraine as the breadbasket. Food, sustenance, life – all this is threatened again by war. I allowed myself free rein in the creative process. If an image came to mind, I would honour it. If there were suggestions in the beginning of a work, I would follow them. I have named this exhibition Borderland. It consists of eight works painted in heartfelt response to Ukraine.”
– Nina Keri

Nina Keri. Skin (2022). Oil on board. 61cm x 122cm.

Nina Keri. Anomaly (2022). Oil on board. 90cm x 118cm.

Nina Keri. Brothers (2022). Oil on board. 98cm x 58cm.

Opening Event
Friday 20 January 2023
5:30pm – 7:30pm