Your Place is Empty is an expression used in Iran as a way of saying ‘you were missed’. The works in this show are like spaces left behind when someone or something is gone, temporarily or permanently. They are disjointed, fading memories of a long time ago. They have become unreliable fragments, manifesting like floor plans of a childhood home drawn from memory. But the lines are disjointed, no longer connecting enough to make any discernible maps. They are fading trails.

Uncle Jack Charles was a respected Aboriginal elder, a Bunerong, Boon Wurrung, Yorta Yorta, Palawa, Wurundjeri, Tungerong man, and an internationally acclaimed actor, mentor and activist. This inspirational, Indigenous gay man was part of the stolen generation and was taken from his family as a tiny baby. He survived the impact of this early childhood trauma by using drugs. Without support or housing, he was often homeless and imprisoned for long periods of time. True artistic recognition came only later in life. Often the most talented members of our community struggle with addiction and homelessness. This work asks us to take a closer look at the way the state criminalises human responses to trauma, which the state itself has often inflicted, willing us to face history more bravely and to treasure people sooner. Uncle Jack made profound and lasting change in legislation and public awareness on Aboriginality, criminality, and social justice in Australia. After his death there was an outpouring of grief across the country. Leonie worked closely with Uncle Jack over a decade developing this collection and now works with the Charles family to grow his legacy, which continues to positively impact the lives of thousands of people.

Wall Kisser is a kinetic sculpture that is hand-cranked by the viewer. On turning the handle the wall receives the repetitive, kiss-thud, kiss-thud of the leather and velvet hearts which have been padded out with dried lavender and rosemary from the artist's garden (a version of an 18th Century pot pourri recipe commonly used to ward off disease and disguise bad smells). The sculpture's rotating form is loosely based on the design of a vibrator that the artist saw online: an electromechanical wheel of 10 plastic ‘tongues’. This sculpture was part of a body of work entitled Gorgeous, first presented at the inaugural Ellen José Art Award at Bayside Gallery in 2022. Gorgeous was an exhibition that imagined the physical gallery (walls, floor space), as if an abstract version of a lover’s body. Gartside explains, "I am curious about the potential connections between a viewer and an artwork... What could we ask of viewers beyond their attention, and as artists, what can we offer? What is possible when both artwork and viewer have skin in the game? In this work I am teasing out possibilities for eliciting surprise, delight, humour through art, and offering my gratitude for the 'lover' type relationship that I have with my art practice."

"When making this series of images, I was interested in the unforeseen alignments and compositions that were created through a process of chance. I used the technique of double-exposure – an analogue photographic process that superimposes two images together by running the same roll of film through a camera and exposing it twice – thus creating a third, combined or composite image. This process is of particular interest to me – working with ideas relating to the self, memory and identity – as it helps me to create images that seem ambiguous, fragmented and in a state of transition, rather than fixed or essential."

Holly Hunt is a Melbourne-based artist, working across painting and printmaking. Her work is influenced by her everyday environment and experiences living in the northern suburbs of Melbourne — an area defined by its rich multiculturalism and working-class history. Her work captures and conveys fleeting moments of everyday life, and the diverse neighbourhoods and people that inhabit them. ‘Market Days’ reflects a period in time when Preston Market faced increasing uncertainty due to plans for redevelopment. The unusual presence of the fox symbolises these concerns, echoing the looming threat posed by the development to the market's cultural significance within the community. This scene evokes an element of nostalgia and illustrates the tension between the old and new in our society.

preston market

In Me Me Dreaming, the series from which this painting comes, Richard Bell explores the relationship between self-identity and society, referencing Emily Kngwarreye’s art through an intentional beauty that encapsulates how collectivism inevitably leads to capitalism in our society. The series’ notable motif of layers “Me, Me, Me,” relates to ideas of self-obsession and consumerism. Bell further plays with perspective, transforming “Me” into “We” at certain angles, highlighting the importance of community alongside individual identity.

Contemporary Aboriginal Art

There are many stories about the Hairy Beka, many of them lost. The story I know is about the creature who lived in the bush. It was very tall and was covered in long white hair and had a strong foul odour. When it walked, its bones made a cracking sound, and it would come around at night and watch when the children were sitting around the campfire. It was known to put the children in its dilly bag. but it would chant a song before grabbing the children and taking them away. (Deewin (this one) Gomendaa (you there) Womigawin (and you) Womingenda and you as well. The Hairy Beka is a well-known story, an old legend amongst the Yorta-Yorta people, to teach children respect, and not to wander too far from camp and to respect fire. This story was passed on by my grandmother (Kooka) Yarmuk, of the Ulupna Clan to her grandchildren. - Aunty Zeta Thomson, Wurundjeri and Yorta -Yorta Traditional Owner.

Heidi Schoenheimer is a painter that captures everyday scenes from her day-to-day. Preston Market Flowers depicts a flower stand at the Preston Markets in 2023, capturing the market at a time that its future was uncertain. The market is an important community resource and gathering place with a rich history. Opened in 1970, the space was designed to be adaptable over time, and featured large open walkways and natural light. The flower stand features flowers typically sold in Melbourne, and reflects the brightness and diversity of Preston Market.

Tropical Flesh (ii) draws upon the slippery experience of identity to explore family connection. There are threads of dislocation and the thickness of tropical time. Silicone casts of tropical jackfruits are fused with a cast of the artists’s aunt’s foot, the cast of which was made upon her permanent return to Thailand. Together, the visibly-aged foot and a fruit that decays quite vividly, evokes a sense of time passing. The work is informed by the experience of witnessing members of family age in slices of time, across vast distances. The artist asks us to consider the work as a memento mori.

“The sweet-smelling chocolate lily is a favourite of mine. It has a scent similar to that of chocolate and can be eaten raw and added to other foods as a decoration on top of cakes. I like it because it is a pretty little plant that you can’t walk by without noticing. The cabbage butterflies are ancestral spirits watching.” — Deanne Gilson In 'Karrap Karrap Beenyak — Flower Baskets of Knowledge', Deanne Gilson depicts dilly bags and baskets drawn from the South Eastern collection of artefacts held within the Melbourne Museum, and gifts from family and friends. They reclaim cultural knowledge, mixing tradition with the lived experiences of her ancestors and re-enriching her life with culture, Country and connection, through the creation of new art. The works highlight the use of Indigenous plants for healing and bush foods, and the Wadawurrung Creation Story and connection to Dja (Country). Dr Deanne Gilson is a proud Wadawurrung woman and an award-winning visual artist living and creating from her ancestral home of Ballarat in Victoria. Her multidisciplinary art practice interrogates the colonial disruption of her family and explores ways in which contemporary art can create a platform towards healing, acceptance and reclaiming cultural identity, often drawing upon traditional knowledges of her ancestors. The Victorian bush where Gilson grew up features predominantly in all of her paintings, alongside many Indigenous plants, trees and birds from her Creation Story. Gilson draws upon layers of tangible and intangible knowledge, she talks about the presence of the intangible as spiritual connections to Country and her ancestors, while the tangible knowledge reflects artefacts and other objects of daily Wadawurrung life. Her works portray a rich cultural history that continues to thrive and grow today despite the restrictions placed on her family by settlement. Gilson’s practice defines Aboriginal women’s business past and present through contemporary art. Traditional marks alongside contemporary marks, link her to the practices of Indigenous mark-making, especially that on her body when in ceremony. Stating that “all of my artworks are an extension of my women’s business and draw on ochre sourced from Wadawurrung Dja (Country)”. The white is used in traditional ceremonies, while the charcoal is a direct link to Gilson’s matriarchal line of her mother’s business. Gilson’s mother, Marlene Gilson, also an artist, gathers charcoal from her daily fire, passing this onto her daughter, extending upon the old and the new ways of sharing knowledge and connection to Country.

Painting

Deanne Gilson is a Proud Wadawurrung woman, emerging Elder, cultural educator and award-winning visual artist from Ballarat, Victoria. Deanne works primarily in painting, fabric/textile design, clay installation and digital imagery. She explores the colonial disruption of her Wadawurrung family, looking at how the male and female gaze has and still does impact her matriarchal women. With an art practice that looks at the objectified, Deanne has found ways to cope with trans-generational trauma through art. Deanne is the first Wadawurrung artist since colonisation to revive lost cultural knowledge found specifically on her ancestral artefacts, consisting of four marks that define her family. Along with re-telling her mother’s Creation Story and the stories based on today’s lived experiences concerned with the physical and spiritual experience. Deanne has been developing her multidisciplinary practice in regional Victoria for almost 35 years and has shown across the National Gallery Victoria and the Koorie Heritage Trust. Post Preston, After the Bushfires, Our Country, Plants and Animals Need Healing is winning work in the 2021 Koorie Art Show.

Escape is a body of work by Taungurung/Filipino artist Alan Stewart made during Melbourne’s long lockdown to reflect his longing to connect to country. Alan says, “Country has always been my escape and connection to my culture. Without it, I lost a sense of self and a way to revitalise my spirit. Those early mornings and long drives helped me to see what’s special about being on country, land that holds such a deep meaning to my ancestors. I look back now and realise how lucky I was.”

Escape is a body of work by Taungurung/Filipino artist Alan Stewart made during Melbourne’s long lockdown to reflect his longing to connect to Country. Alan says, “Country has always been my escape and connection to my culture. Without it, I lost a sense of self and a way to revitalise my spirit. Those early mornings and long drives helped me to see what’s special about being on Country, land that holds such a deep meaning to my ancestors. I look back now and realise how lucky I was.”

taungurung

In Moorina Bonini’s Bitja (Fire), we see a Koorie pattern emerge on river gum bark as it is revitalised and reformed through the smoke and fire. Bitja (Fire) is a reference to caring for Country, using fire as a healing tool to revitalise new beginnings or as a reference point for restoration. A poem accompanies the work: Caring for my Country Breathing Country pulses and the blood in my veins pulse in response I walked outside and I put my feet into the sand Dirt Water Country I covered my feet with Country one handful after another and buried myself in the space Where I have always belonged. Bitja (Fire) revitalises, and through the smoke and charcoal Country heals. Listen.

Maree Clarke is a pivotal figure in the reclamation of south-east Australian Aboriginal art and cultural practices and has a passion for reviving and sharing elements of Aboriginal culture that were lost – or lying dormant – as a consequence of colonisation. She a leader in nurturing and promoting the diversity of contemporary Koorie artists through her revival of traditional possum skin cloaks, together with contemporary designs of kangaroo teeth necklaces, river reed necklaces and string headbands adorned with kangaroo teeth and echidna quills. River Reed Necklace forms a key element of the artist’s practice regenerating cultural practices and strengthening cultural identity and knowledge. Maree Clarke has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, and in 2021 she was the subject of a major survey exhibition Maree Clarke – Ancestral Memories at the National Gallery of Victoria. Other recent exhibitions include Tarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2021), The National, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney (2021), Reversible Destiny, Tokyo Photographic Museum, Tokyo Japan (2021) and the King Wood Mallesons Contemporary Art Prize, for which she was awarded the Victorian Artist award. In 2020 she was awarded the Linewide Commission for the Metro Tunnel project and was the recipient of the Australia Council Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Fellowship.

wāni toaishara is a Congolese artist living and working in Melbourne. His practice explores African Futurisms, Statelessness, Indigeneity, climate justice, those on the margins of those movements and dialogues, Indigenous knowledge production and the effects of dislocation in a globalised anti-Black, Afrophobic society. Final Solution enters the Darebin Art Collection as the winning work of the 2021 Darebin Art Prize. A personal and introspective moving image work, Final Solution features the artist’s family and friends as a way of interrogates some of these broader ideas, speaking to urgent issues both in this nation and on an international level. The powerful message is offset by a sense of intimacy, much needed as we move forward amid the paradigm shifts of the last two years.

In Bridge Merri Creek, Katherine Hattam continues her exploration of local waterways and their locations. This work on plywood depicts the bridge over Merri Creek on High Street, Northcote with accompanying trees and powerlines and the much ignored cyclists dismount sign. It is surrounded by a repertoire of recurring domestic motifs significant to the artist including chairs, clocks and a shopping basket, creating a psychological layering of memory via personally symbolic objects.

DIM Furniture, Thomastown (Industryscapes 34) is a precise and detailed industrial landscape presented to the viewer from an eye-level street perspective: a factory located in Thomastown, a northern suburb of Melbourne, comprising silos and heavy equipment together with a jumble of accumulated debris. Employing a flatness of form and colour, Senior’s watercolour palette is deliberately subtle using many colours with similar tonal values to construct a composition that reflects our understanding of a stereotypical Melbourne industrial site.

"Empty Avenues (Best of Season 1) reimagines the daily life of the artist through the formal languages of television sitcoms and YouTube ‘Best of’ compilations. By doing so the work engages the concept of narrative identity; questioning the extent to which identity is shaped through media influence, and our potential to reformulate understandings of self through narrative reconstruction. What emerges is an absurd, Existential sitcom that explores themes of meaninglessness, isolation, domesticity, and despair. Extended statement: The concept of narrative identity In other words, our understanding of ourselves, the values and goals that we possess, and our place within society can only be grasped within the context of a self-generated historical narrative. However, to what extent is our formulation of narrative identity shaped by pre-existing narrative structures? And how can the implementation of alternative narrative structures potentially reformulate our understanding of ourselves? Empty Avenues (Best of Season 1) explores these ideas by reimagining the narrative identity of the artist through the conventions of traditional TV sitcoms and YouTube ‘Best of’ compilations. Interactions, responsibilities, and leisure activities are taken from O’Brien’s daily life and restaged as scenes within a constructed domestic environment. Through the process of restaging, the work engages uncanniness as a way of generating critical distance and estrangement towards daily life. This process also allows the work to be instilled with a greater sense of subjectivity; utilizing mise-en-scène to externalise the experience of somebody struggling with Existential concerns. This blending of factuality and subjectivity emerges as a magical realist take on a traditional sitcom premise: the Odd Couple scenario. This cliché premise is depicted in Empty Avenues as the relationship between a man and a materialisation of ‘the void’ – a universal nothingness that permeates everything. In these terms, the relationship between the characters can be understood as an embodiment of the conditions that generate the Absurd. In terms of narrative structure, Empty Avenues is presented as a ‘Best of’ compilation instead of a traditionally chronological, cohesive narrative. Such compilations, typically assembled by fans and amateur video editors, feature fragments of scenes that have been removed from their original contexts and reassembled in ways that distort the sequence of events. By presenting Empty Avenues in this way, the work disrupts the temporal conditions of narrative identity that allow for the construction of meaning. As such, scenes are instilled with a greater sense of absurdity and meaninglessness, allowing the audience to share in the Existential perspective of the main character. As a result, both the character and the audience are confronted with a narrative world that is constantly on the brink of both creation and destruction, and are faced with the question of whether they can continue to engage with such a world. At it’s core, Empty Avenues (Best of Season 1) explores the enduring question: how do we find meaningful relationships and pursuits in an immutably meaningless world? "

"AN UNCANNY LIKENESS It’s difficult to escape the flight of the imagination in Lynda Draper’s new work. Set within a dream-like milieu, an anthology of wondrous and majestic objects float and bob in space. Referencing kings and queens, and the flamboyance of the French Baroque, these large filigree works are woven from clay, and while not explicitly figurative, possess familiar facial markers which bring into play the metaphysical qualities attributed to inanimate objects by human memory and experience. Draper spent the European winter near Versailles, where marble sculptures set among the gardens are shrouded in the winter months to prevent frost from taking its toll on precarious limbs. And while the influence from her residency is certainly evident, rather than stimulating work of this nature, it has merely activated and amplified elements of her recent practice. From smaller ‘tiaras’ in 2016, her work has evolved into sizeable ‘crowned portraits’ of clay. Hovering somewhere between the real and the unreal, these works are architectural and figurative, formed and formless, literal and fictional. They bewitch and amuse, revealing multiple characters and personalities only after careful observation. The medium of clay is so exquisitely anomalous in Draper’s work that it becomes, to the viewer, an afterthought rather than a dialogue prompt for works that are traditionally contextualised by their medium. And this is how it should be. Clay has undergone a renaissance in the past decade or so; no longer is it in the domain of craft. With a strong conceptual narrative and by pushing the medium beyond its natural limits, ceramicists like Draper can be counted among Australia’s significant artists who contribution is gaining ground in contemporary art discourse. And yet, it is the use of clay which makes Draper’s work so utterly extraordinary. Ambitious in scale, virtuosic in composition, she has the ability to make the unmakeable. Drawing from a conventional practice of coiling and handbuilding, the maker’s hand is evident on every square inch of her work. The uneven coils are shaped by the impressions of her grip on the responsive nature of the material. But Draper somehow dispenses with the inherent limitations of the soft clay medium, manipulating it in a way which defies physics and logic. Her award-winning installation for the Sidney Myer Australian Ceramic Award in 2019 is testament to an artist whose practice has consolidated. Her ambition, robust conceptual thinking and technical understanding of materials have reached a zenith which has been rewarded her with one of the most prestigious prizes in Australian art"