5th - 21st February 2021
Gallery One: Geoff Hogg, Alasdair MacKinnon, Paul Candy and Nick Blackmore – Two Lines and Three Blocks
This project began in Cuba researching the question: “How can the character of the rail line, its surrounding communities and the experience of the journey help us understand and contribute to expanded sites of social engagement, dialogue and creativity?”
Originally built around two rail lines - the famous Hershey line linking Havana to the sugar town of Matanzas explored in the video created by Paul Candy and Geoff Hogg - the exhibition focuses on the Upfield line connecting central Melbourne to its northern suburbs.
Emphasizing movement, portability and change, it includes cartographic works made by Geoff Hogg from materials found along the line, three travelling cases to contain them crafted by Nick Blackmore from a discarded Japanese instrument box, and an intricate carrying bag, enabling them to be easily moved created by Alisdair McKinnon. All four artists are connected to the site through workplace, home and the experience of everyday life.
The Canning Room: Hope Lumsden-Barry - LOOM
LOOM is an ongoing series of 'weavings' created using python and photoshop. Presented as prints, LOOM explores the demateralisation of making; the historical relationship between programmable looms and computer science; and the design approaches of the Bauhaus weaving workshop. Drawing upon these lineages, LOOM positions the computer not only as a tool but as a site for making: as a communal workshop or personal studio, in and of itself.
Accompanying catalogues are available for LOOM. Please see the link below.
26th February - 14th March 2021
Gallery One: Charlotte Watson – Confluence
Confluence follows Watson’s merging sense of home. Through drawing and storytelling this exhibition explores various meetings; history and the ocean, trees and the self, and how waterways carry that which we cannot always see.
The Canning Room: Luke King - Reinterpretation Portraits
Staring at the window, lockdown tells you to do this or that, isolation confuses and twists your stomach. During this time to contemplate, King searches our portraits and moments, relating and reinterpreting the feelings in the confined space.
19th March – 4 April 2021
Gallery One: A Droplet of Dew on her Glittering Web
Romey Porcu, Seth Searle, Lucinda Florence, Gemma Flack, Cat Rabbit, Caitlin Shearer, Eleanor James, Chloe Rose Thomas, Stephanie Watt, April Phillips, Aoife Billings, Sophie Morrow, Georgia Sacre, Lizzi Morris, Eve Wickson, Leili Tehrani Walker, Kanya Oldaker, Lilah Benetti, Frances Cannon, Hilary Green
A Droplet of Dew on Her Glittering Web features the work of multiple artists personally responding to Louise Bourgeois’ recurring motif of the Spider. The show features multi disciplined work including soft sculpture, film, quilts, embroidery, painting, ceramics and poetry which are all delicately woven together by the themes of connection, transparency, community and home. Curated by Frances Cannon and Hilary Green, this show aims to celebrate the work of local women and gender non-conforming artists and invites you to enter an intricate web of creative talent.
Image: Medusa, Soft sculpture - glass beads, cotton, wire, acrylic paint.
Artists: Hilary Green, Georgia Sacre
The Canning Room: Ariana Luca – Trace and Reflect
Trace and Reflect is a series of works on paper that explores how an abstract composition is constructed. Each work traces the relationship between chance and control that exists within non-representational drawing and painting processes.
8 April – 25 April 2021
Gallery One: Douglas Kirwan – Pattern and Ornament
This body of works consists of paintings showing how natural forms have been transformed into the stylized motifs often found in lace.
The sources of these images are varied, maybe Chantilly lace, the design from a table cloth or even a strange insect that sparks a series of transformative possibilities.
The Canning Room: Matthew Greenwood – Ultraviolent Lite
Morphing flesh, distorted desires and ambiguous forms. Ultraviolent Lite tongues the blurred boundaries between sensory and subconscious. Greenwood’s pieces heave and glow with irregular cadence, visceral imagery consorting with the ethereal. Space and proximity inform awareness within a realm of colour, impulse and light.
30 April – 16 May 2021
Gallery One: Marlaina Read – Fish Wife (Marrying the Baltic Sea)
I made a wedding dress and married the Baltic Sea. Now I make a marriage house. The bones of my house are iron bars, shrouded by textiles decorated with oceanic stitching, tapestry and etching. This ceremonial ecosystem reflects my ancestry and ecological self - from sea to spit to island.
The Canning Room: Adam Boyd – How Many Bones in the World
An exhibition of recent paintings, set in a world glinting between blues and reds. Populated with fiends and foes, they take their resolve from a story about the power of numbers and the dream of describing the world with patterns. An endless succession of figures and forms.
21 May – 20 June 2021
Gallery One: Chris Evans – Action & Mismatch
“The most efficient search of any unmapped territory takes the form of a random walk”
George Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral.
Emergent forms and branching patterns. A mash up of disjointed, pseudo random, replicated symbols and gestures in a constant state of disorder and error correction. These paintings become approximations of an urban ontology.
The Canning Room: Caterina Leone – Luminä
My exhibition features a series of self-portraits inspired by a residency in Finland. Working in silverpoint, I place myself naked in the snowy landscape, slowly dissolving as the works progress. The solid figures interact least with the scenery, initiating questions of our place in nature; the reality as well as the possibly futile desire for change.
1 July – 18 July 2021
Gallery One: Marina Mason – Fountain
The fountain provides us with a cascade of intuitive imagery. The font like objects in this exhibition, made from a variety of regenerative material, speak of continuity, restoration, transformation and hope.
The Canning Room: August Carpenter – light touch
light touch is a series of 100 drawings forming intricate records of places known and unknown.
Through a series of repeated blind movements, the drawings explore the agency of connection between hand and ground in a time of minimal contact.
31 July – 15 Aug 2021
Gallery One: Beverley Southcott & Matthew Schiavello – Southcott x Schiavello
Please note: due to restrictions there is no opening for these exhibitions.
Please keep an eye on our social media regarding public event announcements.
This is an exhibition that resonates as a whole where Southcott x Schiavello consider their own photographic practices, as they collaboratively re-imagine, each other’s work.
Matthew re-cuts and re-assembles the images, forming harmonious and balanced compositions. Beverley uses a detailed layering process to add an ethereal beauty to the works.
Image: Fold, 2021. Digital print
Artists: Matthew Schiavello
The Canning Room: Jess McCaughey – Urban Brood
Please note: due to restrictions there is no opening for these exhibitions. Please keep an eye on our social media regrading public event announcements.
Urban Brood is celebration of all things feathered, fluffy and flying that grace our Melbourne landscape. 27 of our commonly found bird species in felt, wool, embroidery and needle felting take center stage and highlight that they are anything but ordinary.