Group show from the See Saw Collective hosted at Impress Printmakers Studio and Gallery in February 2023.

Artists: Cholena Drew Hughes, Domenica Hoare, Marta Larzabal, Ally McKay, Tess Mehonoshen, Lucy Rebekah, Jo Rees-Jones, Maikki Toivanen.

Exhibition guide

Artist Statement - exhibition

Modern society is structured around demands on our attention, apps designed to connect us via the palm of our hand tap into our reward centres, train us to constantly seek the next reward and transform us into the product within the new economy of attention. The act of stepping away from the screen and embracing the vastness and vividness of reality has become an act of rebellion.

Artist Statement - my response

How insignificant we are in the schema of space.

How infinitely small.

Searching for meaning, we look upwards and outwards.

Who am I? Why am I here?

And all we see is the past. The further our eye travels, the older space becomes. The past, present and future in a single moment.

I became obsessed with the recent photographs of space released by NASA from the Webb telescope and recreated them for my response to Vast and Vivid.

I’ve been exploring colour in my work for a while now and wanted to create a psychological connection between images and positive mental thinking.

This series was displayed at the group show, New Dawn in 2021, which included my husband Matt Williams in his first art exhibition since commencing art school in 2020.

Artist statement

Negative thoughts originate from our prehistoric brain and in those times, they served an important purpose. They kept us alive.

But in today’s world, negative thinking creates anxiety and mental health issues. We no longer have to accept the damaging impact our thoughts can have on our lives.

Every time we replace a negative thought with a positive one, our brain remembers this action and a new pathway eventually forms in our brain.

This art exhibition explores new patterns of behaviour and new beginnings for artists and married couple, Marta and Matt.

Group show at Impress Gallery, Brisbane which I coordinated, curated and exhibited with artists from Brisbane, Canberra and Melbourne.

Exhibiting artists: Lucy Di Mauro, Chris Hagen, Claudia Husband, Marta Larzabal, Ally McKay, Tess Mehonoshen, Christine Scott, Maikki Toivanen.

Exhibition guide

Artist statement

Tactility is changing. Our fingers no longer dig, scribble, scratch and lift as often as they once did. We spend less time holding, touching and using our hands to perform manual labour. The immediacy of our routines and lifestyles leaves us with even less time to learn and achieve skill.

Tie, Tether, Tangle strings together the work of artists who recognise the handmade as an integral component within their own respective practices. This exhibition champions the process of making as a means to uncover the subconscious anxieties which can only be revealed through doing.

Working through a variety of mediums and techniques, the artists use these verbs to challenge their connection to the handmade in taking the time to be anchored within their process.

The Storm

BY MARTA LARZABAL

Traditionally it’s a female craft: sewing, stitching, bundling sticks for burning witches, and witchcraft.

It’s overwhelming, the ancestral trauma. They know now it’s in the DNA.

We can sew it up but it won’t heal.

We can talk with therapists in talk therapy but it’s still there.

We can bundle it up and store it like a pile of firewood, but then it just burns.

Instead we sit quietly and mindfully, and reach back and forth to familial connections and live in the past and future form, and find peace in the pieces and calm after the storm.

Through old family photos we know the stories and myths of our relatives and ancestors. Within our family, they are heroes.

They are Gods and Goddesses.

Their stories enliven our spirit.

Their essence imbues our hearts.

To know them, is to know our self, and each other.

In a time when photographs were rare, we only have a handful of photos of these mythical entities but yet their stories invade and enthral our lives.

This series of paintings was inspired by old family photos of incredible women in my family, medieval woodcuts and Mirka Mora.

Residency project at House Conspiracy, West End where a group of selected artists contributed new work for the collaborative artist showcase, Techne.

For the project, I made a series of little books, drawings and paintings. Through these works, I investigated dystopian futures presented in popular media and challenged the notions of fear that tend to be dominant within these narratives.

https://houseconspiracy.org/techne

Artist statement

Investigation of dystopian futures and the psychology of fear. A journey though our amygdala and back in time to our prehistoric brain. An encounter with possibility and the perception of time.

Fear intrigues and drives us but also entertains and thrills. 

What will be our future? Can our fear be transformed, or will we be drawn into the dark?

In 2019, I had my first solo art exhibition in the corridors of the Blue Room Cinebar, Rosalie.

It was a culmination of my creative work to date and showcased the diversity of my practice through paintings, digital prints, illustrations and mixed media.

The exhibition explored themes of time and transformation as well as the psychological condition.

Artist statement

The first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I watched was called ‘Once More, with Feeling’, episode seven of season six. I was instantly hooked.

It was my gateway episode.

Since then, I’ve obsessively watched the whole show many times, over and over and again.

We can start anywhere and at any time. A great journey is always waiting. An invitation.

Discovery.

Transformation.

Restoration.

We already know rock bottom and the beauty that was there. Our eyes burned black by the sun, and yet, still the seer still sees.

A series of group exhibitions in Brisbane in which I participated, where artists were given random combinations of two words in advance and invited to create new work in response.

The word combinations were then interpreted by two seperate artists and displayed alongside one another, sharing a common theme and a common boundary.

The Word Conterminous series of group exhibitions were coordinated and curated by Angela Hughes and Bec Todd.

For my final year studio project in the Bachelor of Fine Art at QCA, I focused on the stories of tragedy from my parent’s home region, South America, during a period of war called Operation Condor that lasted throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

My parents left Uruguay in 1969, at the start of this period and the project was the result of research and exploration into their personal stories.