Tasmanian Art & Design: The September Round-Up

By Art & Design Sub-Editor Elliott Nimmo

Every month, Art & Design Sub-Editor Elliott Nimmo brings his round-up of the artists and designers to watch (and invest in) in lutruwita/Tasmania right now. Here’s what’s hot in September.

▼

MELANIE MCCOLIN-WALKER

lutruwita/Tasmania's rugged weather systems herald violence and fragility in equal parts: the squalls from the Southern Ocean, or the near-silent stillness of a cloud-scudded day.

Melanie's realist works tell the story of place and time, leading the viewer on an as-yet unfinished journey. 

VISIT

SAM FIELD

These are paintings that take the Australian landscape and flip it on its head with a waltz of figuration, lurid colour and energetic brushstrokes. One of a few emerging Tasmanian talents to keep an eye on.

VISIT

JULIA CASTIGLIONI-BRADSHAW

From her Molesworth studio, Julia experiments fearlessly with mark-making: dotted splotches that crescendo across the canvas into a field of colour; segments of repeated patterns that build form and depth. It's like she's taken a leaf out of the post-Impressionists' handbook, gleefully torn it up, and re-presented her twenty-first century take on painting. Glorious.

VISIT

RODNEY POPLE

The enfant terrible of Australian  painting, Rodney's expressionist works are searing mirrors of our history and reality. Known for his mixed media technique - incorporating archival photographic printing before the painting begins - he has tackled subject matter as far ranging as the Pope and patriarchy to cuddly animals and Port Arthur.

VISIT

ZSOLT FALUDI

It would be foolish - and near impossible - to ascribe a style to Zsolt's artistic output in clay. His pieces overflow with ideas and methods, bright and charming and earthly and infused with the skills this master craftsman has spent the better part of his life honing.

VISIT

MEG COWELL

Ethereal portraits of women's clothing sublimely lit against a dark background: Meg's subject matter is as much a memento mori as a love letter to hope and beauty.

VISIT

MICHAYE BOULTER

When an artist steps into the landscape, breathes it in, and exists there with it, there is a kind of synchronicity that begins, between the self and the surrounds. And it's the artist's task to pour this experience onto canvas. In Michaye's case, the subject isn't poured so much as exquisitely brought to life with breathtaking skill.

VISIT

CHEN PING

Chen Ping's mark-making is muscular, vibrant and expressionistic. Treading the liminal space between China, his place of origin, and nipaluna/Hobart, Chen's paintings continue an exciting dialogue between two different aesthetic paradigms. Truly exciting work.

VISIT

JANE BAMFORD

These contemplative ceramics derive meaning from the protean landscapes of lutruwita/Tasmania, and comment on one of the most important issues of our times: climate change.

VISIT

JOSH FOLEY

Melting, psychedelic, 17th century still lifes and vignettes of Australian suburbia pour like a fever dream from Josh's brush. An utterly unique point of view from this Tasmanian painter.

VISIT

TRAVIS BELL

Travis's work celebrates clay in its raw form: unadorned and unfussed. His most recent body of work focuses on the 'stupa', a hemispherical structure holding relics, and can be seen at Handmark Gallery.

VISIT

LINDA VAN NIEKERK

A curation of materials that seem to sit 'just so', with hardly any evidence of the artist's hand. Thoughtful, deeply meditative and inspired by the Tasmanian wilderness.

VISIT