EXHIBITION PROGRAM
JANUARY 2022–MARCH 2023

2022

KIERAN BUTLER
“80 YEARS FROM NOW”

Kieran Butler, I want to bathe with you in the sea, (detail), 2019. Digital print on cotton rag. Image courtesy of the artist.

80 years from now is a solo exhibition that presents a new body of work by Kieran Butler. The exhibition uses the prompt 80 years from now to imagine possible collective futures of identity, queerness, politics, climate change, and community - we are working towards, riding into the horizon.

ALISON BENNETT
”VEGETAL/DIGITAL”

Alison Bennett, Blossom: Silver Princess (work in progress), 2021. Screen capture of photogrammetry point-cloud. Image courtesy of the artist.

Exploring vegetal thinking, digital gardening and post-human neuroqueer phenomenology through the affordances of expanded photography, artist Alison Bennett considers native blossoms as celestial encounters.

PAUL WILLIAMS
“RECURRING MOTIFS”

Paul Williams, Sleep and Dreams (detail), 2019. Acrylic, gesso and glitter on polycotton. 254 x 162cm. Photography by Grant Hancock.

Recurring Motifs is an exhibition of new paintings and sculpture. Abstract in nature they combine geometric and organic shapes in works that are visually and spatially ambiguous.

Using techniques of scraping, layering and masking Williams re-configures and re-presents narratives he has unearthed through his investigations of domestic and urban environments. At times unsettling he draws us into Lynchian like nightmare as the ground shifts and feels like it could crumble and collapse beneath our feet. He lays bare that comfort might only be temporary and what appears stable could unravel at any time.

KIRTIKA KAIN + SAJAN MANI
“EARTH 200 CE”

Kirtika Kain, The Solar Line VI (detail), Gold paint, indoor pigment, binder medium, disused silk screen, 59 x 46 cm, 2020. image courtesy of Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery; Photography by Luis Power.

Sajan Mani, Caste-pital durational performance 9.30 hours, “Specters of Communism. A Festival on the Revolutionary Century" conceptualized by Okwui Enwezor, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2017 l Curator: Raqs Media Collective. Image courtesy of Marion Vogel, courtesy artist and Haus der Kunst.

Two artists, one shared history. Showcasing a six-month collaboration between Berlin-based artist Sajan Main and Sydney-based artist Kirtika Kain, Earth 200 CE presents their shared experience of being Dalit, through vastly different mediums. Mani’s intersectional practice utilises durational performance, video and painting to explore the marginalised body, and its relationship to migration, colonial history and ecology. Kain’s materially rich practice foregrounds screen printing and sculpture to envisage artefacts from an ancient Dalit material culture. Both artists work from archives to embolden a contemporary Dalit voice, reimagining and celebrating a history that has been derided and cloaked in invisibility, stigma and subjugation.

Kirtka Kain is represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery
Sajan Mani is represented by NOME Gallery, Berlin

ELISE HARMSEN & NICOLA SMITH
“THE EMPTY ROOM FEELS BIGGER”

Elise Harmsen, Last Sentences, 2019. Video projection, 5min 16 sec looped. Photo credit: M.P. Hopkins.

Nicola Smith, Je tu il elle #17, oil on wall, 598 x 450mm, 2019. Image courtesy of the artist.

The empty room feels bigger explores time as a visual medium within the works of Nicola Smith & Elise Harmsen. Each artist works with the heavy presence of passing time associated with the frozen frame of the celluloid strip (made possible through its digitisation) through painting and projection.

Nicola Smith is represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery

CHANELLE COLLIER & JOE WILSON
“EVERYTHING IS OK :)”

Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier, TwentyOne 002, 2020. Dimensions variable found vintage canvas at AGNSW. Image courtesy of TwentyOne Program.

‘Everything is ok :)' is a series of textile works with solvent transfer images (and/or text). This series pairs the political economy of found vintage French tents, that are deconstructed into wall hanging and suspended textiles, with image and text that is informed by research into the Situationist International practices.

EO GILL(CUR), FRANCES BARRETT, ARCHIE BARRY, BRIAN FUATA, STANYA KAHN AND HARRY DODGE, SIONE MONU, JIMMY NUTTALL, NAT RANDALL & ANNA BRECKON, GARDEN REFLEXXX, P. STAFF, ATHENA THEBUS & CHLOE CORKRAN
“SCREWBALL”

Athena Thebus & Chloe Corkran, In Dramatic Roles Such as These, 2022, vinyl, dimensions variable. image courtesy of the artist.

Screwball refers to a classic Hollywood comedy style depicting gender and sexual tensions, often across class lines. This exhibition harnesses the comedic, conflictual and charged nature of the ‘screwball’ to frame video and filmmaking practices that draw on methodologies that also disturb heteronormative order, work to prevent the possibility of a coherent identity, and challenge what is considered intact and valuable.

ANNA MAY KIRK
“FORECASTING THE TOUCH OF CHANGE”

Anna May Kirk, Forecasting the Touch of Change (storm glass), 2021. Hand blown glass, oxidising copper, storm glass chemical composition according to the 1859 instructions of Admiral Robert FitzRoyy. Image courtesy of the artist.

Forecasting the touch of change priorities the senses to encounter the spectral nature of climate change. Through sensory sculptures and installation the ungraspable forces, intensities and scales of atmospheric change are drawn into the intimacy of the body, emphasising the body as a conduit for perceiving a transforming world.

SHAN TURNER-CARROLL
“BODIES ON A ROCK”

Shan Turner-Caroll, Bodies On A Rock, 2020. Found and made objects, polystyrene, plaster, costumes, screens and projectors. Photo credit: Maitland Regional Art Gallery.

Bodies On A Rock includes moving images and sculptures, developed during an artists in residency program in the Icelandic town of Seydisfjordur. The imagery developed play’s with ideas of nature, the body, perception and looking to existing colonial visions of land and the blueprints that lay within assumptions of reality.

THEA ANAMARA PERKINS
”THAT WHICH ENDURES”

Thea Anamara Perkins, Station 6, 2021. Acrylic on clayboard, 45.7 x 61 cm. Image courtesy of N.Smith Gallery.

That Which Endures seeks to examine the storied layers within records, the confluence of the personal and political, and the indeterminate nature of memory. To illuminate the many connections that flow through lifetimes - to explore what calls and compels us, and what endures.

Thea Anamara Perkins is represented by N. Smith Gallery

TARIK AHLIP
“PHOSPHORUS”

Tarik Ahlip, Phosphorus 1, 2021.Plaster and pigment, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the artist

Phosphorus will be an installation of seven large scale relief works invoking the traditions of landscape and the Sublime, and their ethical implications in the context of grave ecological crisis. This will be accompanied by the premiere Sydney screening of the video work Of Paradise and Fire.

2023

SAB D’SOUZA
“THERE IS NO FIRE”

Sab D'Souza, Paper and wood, variable, 2021. Bus Street install photography by Amy Stuart.

Sab was a prolific artist in thought as much as they were in practice. They had been working on a new body of work featuring mirror and text-based objects. Honouring them and their vision for this exhibition, Sab's family and friends have recreated these works in line with their application to Verge Gallery's program.

There is No Fire explores the trauma surrounding loss of space and digital affective cultures. As audiences are constrained by the ongoing and potential recurrent lockdowns, the three major new works in this exhibition attempt to relieve these ‘difficult feelings’ by incorporating online and tangible components to each work.

NICHOLAS ALOISIO-SHEARER
“LANDSCAPE WITH A RUINED TEMPLE”

Nicholas Aloisio- Shearer, Corporeal Defiance, jacquard woven tapestry, 150x120cm, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.

Landscape with a Ruined Temple brings together a series of tapestries and sculptures which engage with the decorative traditions of Baroque tapestry, contemporary fantasy illustration and internet erotica to draw out the affective connections between Western art history, imaging technologies and networked cultures.

KENZEE PATTERSEN & MITCHEL CUMMING
“A REDISTRIBUTION”

Kenzee Patterson, Deep Heat, laminated Rouse-Port Fairy bluestone taken from excess, construction material at Lyon Housemuseum Galleries, Kew, 57 x 38 x 10 cm, 2020. Image courtesy of the artist.

Mitchel Cumming & Kenzee Patterson, Redistribution (forbearing / forthcoming) (process image), 2021. The weight of a basalt millstone held in the storage of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney pressing a magnesium deboss die into twenty sheets of handmade paper for the duration of the exhibition ½ to dust, held at Darren Knight Gallery March 6 – April 1, 2021. Photo credit: Kenzee Patterson

A redistribution is an exhibition project being developed in a collaboration between Mitchel Cumming and Kenzee Patterson, featuring artworks by the individual artists as well as works they have made collaboratively, a pair of historical basalt millstones, and a body of writing and research. Some of the artworks to be included are existing, while the artists also intend to create new collaborative and individual artworks for the exhibition.

This project gathers the varied ethical, material and political strands associated with an idea of redistribution, embodied within two colonial-era basalt millstones. Resisting dominant Western narratives of settlement, growth, industry and the developmental, the artists instead follow the poetic, speculative threads that the stone itself suggests.

Kenzee Patterson is represented by Darren Knight Gallery

KENNETH LAMBERT
“STASIS”

Kenneth Lambert, Stasis, simulated installation view, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.

Stasis is a series of data portraits created in collaboration with STARTTS. The work conveys the experiences of underrepresented refugee youths (18-25) living across Australia, who have experienced mental and physical trauma, incarceration, torture, being socially disadvantaged and geographically displaced.