UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Opening 31.01.2025

Exhibitions run til 08.03.25

FIRST SPACE

Mopping of a Palawa

Rodney (Rod) Gardner

Ya, I'm Rod, and I'm a Tasmanian Aboriginal Watercolourist. But not for this show. I live art, I am art, and in this exhibition, I am releasing myself of the self-determined constraints of my typical practice, and leaning into domesticity. Mopping of a Palawa is an experimental exploration of the every-day mop turned-paintbrush. Mark-making, inks, in black and red, the only control, is the motion of my arms connecting with the apparatus. Rather than working with a vision, I am allowing the medium to take-over. A journey with no known outcome.

Bio: Rodney (Rod) Gardner is an emerging Aboriginal artist who enjoy many areas of painting. His main subjects are those from the Aboriginal community and Launceston’s river and streetscapes. Rod is currently working in Watercolours, charcoal and prefers the plenair style of painting - that is, outdoors. Rod is self taught, learning online and through practice but was also fortunate to secure a grant through Arts Tasmania which saw him be mentored by prominent artist, Jonathan Bowden.

INNER SPACE

Screen Work: Doomscroll

Ben Barwick

In the age of doom, a simple screen provides the highly-craved schadenfreude that placates us against our own lives. I invite you to sit, watch, and enjoy schadenfreude at it's most accessible; en masse, en chair, en repeat. Bask in the soft glow of the end of sanity.

Bio: Ben Barwick is a non-binary creative residing in lutruwita. Their works utilise their lived experiences in tandem with technology, light and irony to portray their neuroses as simple yet large-scale and occasionally confronting pieces of media.

IG: @orions_pants / fb.com/benbarwickofficial

BACK SPACE

My Heart is a Cave

Audrey Newton

The Heart is a Cave explores the body as a cave—an interconnected vessel, both physical and metaphorical. Audrey Newton delves into the hidden vibrations of the body, examining how its rhythms resonate with others, much like the quiet, subtle ecologies of subterranean caves. Drawing inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin’s concept of entrainment, where two oscillating bodies synchronize their rhythms, Newton reflects on how time and environment can alter our sensory perceptions. In this work, the heart becomes the origin of creation, and the throat, the passage from the inner cave to the outer world. Newton taps into trance states, hypnosis, and dreams, venturing through the caverns of the body’s own interior to understand how the cave—hollow, dark, and deep—mirrors the human experience. Through this exploration, Newton reflects on the intimate relationship between the self, the body, and the world’s unseen rhythms.

Bio: My work blends sculpture and installation to explore the unique properties and agency of materials and space, and their inherent ability to express tension, intimacy, and transformation. I am deeply interested in the spaces where opposites converge— the balance between beauty and the unexpected, light and shadow, magic and reality, or spirit and matter. These contrasts reflect the complexity of human experience, revealing the liminal spaces that exist between dualities. Through my work, I invite viewers to reflect on the fluid nature of time, the interconnectedness of all things, and the ever-shifting boundaries between what is seen and unseen.

THE SPACE

Swirlz: The Show

Dusty McCord-Anastassiou

Making art has always felt like more of a compulsion than a choice, more passion than pastime. Most artists can relate to this feeling, and those who don't can retreat from the mad drive that creation sometimes, if not always, is. The struggling artist is an unhelpful stereotype, promoting a false prerequisite that to make great art, one must suffer. But the truth of the matter is that suffering is one of the few certainties of life. That and death. Happiness is promised to no one. For me, art has always been a means to make sense of the pains of life that at times engulf us. An attempt to express the ineffable, the spiritual reality that underpins everything. And, one would hope, a chance to share in a now uncommon vision. To see through the swirlz of life, with eyes of love. For all its sweet and sour moments. ~ dusty

BIO: Dusty McCord-Anastassiou is a multidisciplinary artist who has practised on the fringes of Australia's creative communities for over 15 years.

As an artist, Dusty is deeply interested in how the creative process can help make sense of, and thus transform, our most difficult experiences into a shared language of symbols, vibrations and frequencies. An act of inspiration that connects us all through empathy, helping us to feel a little less alone.

Equally inspired by the colourful set design of children's TV shows from the 90s, shit street art, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and whatever random ephemera passed that day on the sidewalk of life, Dusty's art is a 21st Century potpourri of spirit, squiggles and naïve virtuosity. Pressed to find a cheap and cheerful slogan to describe their style, one might call it “cartoon Kandinsky”.

This is Dusty's first solo show in a professional gallery. (Their last was a little over 5 years ago, at a sharehouse in Preston). The artist is honoured to exhibit at Sawtooth ARI, a creative community he much admires. And in the city of Launceston, a place he dearly loves.