24 February -

13 May
24 February -
13 May
 4

I recently attended an exhibition opening in

Foreword
a small country town and was struck by the way
in which artists and supporters from a wide area
had come together to celebrate the occasion and
support one of their number. There were no capital
city curators present but there were two regional
gallery directors and someone from the local
media. While this doesn’t, by any means, refute the
idea that regional artists can feel isolated it does
demonstrate that networks of support do exist ‘in
the bush’ and that artists are often valued for their
contribution to community.

Isolation though isn’t just about having a

network of supporters. In WA, and even in the
greater South West, distance is the arguably the
biggest obstacle. Even in these times of greatly
increased digital connectivity being physically
remote is both a physical and psychological barrier.
Inferior connectivity is not just an issue for remote
Australia these days but the NBN frustrations that
many of us feel are certainly amplified many times
for people in remote places.

Conventional wisdom says that regional artists

do not have the opportunities that urban artists
have because they are not close to the action so it’s
more difficult for them to get noticed or promoted.
The considerable decline in the number of Perth
dealer galleries over recent years has meant fewer
opportunities for all WA artists.

Being Regional
“There appears to be fewer exhibitions for
audiences to attend and fewer opportunities
to purchase work, which has the corollary of a
negative impact on artist and gallery incomes and
artist employment. Employment in the visual arts
is in a period of transition, with lower than relative
average annual growth. This marks the beginning of
a potential vicious circle for the sector.
”Present State: An inquiry into the visual arts sector in Western
Australia 2016. DCA Visual Arts Discussion Paper, page 3
 5

The current situation brings the role and

capacity of regional galleries into sharp focus. WA’s
network of regional galleries is patchy compared to
other States and it was only for the first time in 2017
that a lead organisation for WA regional galleries
was established. GalleriesWest will advocate for
greater recognition of the significant role that
regional galleries play in fostering regional culture
and identity.

Showing and interpreting the work of artists

from their region is a fundamental component of
any regional public gallery program. Add to that
responsibility, being a source of useful information
and providing professional development
opportunities and it becomes clear that regional
galleries are a vital link for regional artists. South
West Art Now is a core BRAG project directly
aimed at exploring and celebrating the range of
work being made by the best artists in the South
West region.

In 2010 BRAG commissioned David Bromfield

and Pippa Tandy to visit South West artists’ studios
and select the exhibition Over There Survey 2010
from that research. The result was a considered
exhibition and a publication which became the go-
to source for understanding the art of the region.
For this 2018 exhibition BRAG exhibitions curator
Alisa Blakeney has visited the studios of artists
after their selection for the exhibition. The result is
once again a package of exhibition and publication
which we believe will guide those interested in the
art of our region for some time to come.

Julian Bowron
Director
Bunbury Regional Art Gallery
 6

You don’t have

to live here

but it helps

Mapping the Geographical

Imagination in the

South West
 7
By Michele Grimston

Artists are architects of the geographical

imagination and essential to the soul of a place. While we
are all active agents in our environment, creating our own
geographies and place meanings, the job of the artist gives
them a privileged role in this process. With the skills of
observation, imagination, interpretation and interrogation,
artists are perfectly positioned to undertake this process
of geographical mapping, where the imagined and real
elements of space are equally important in creating a
representation of place that can contain a multiplicity of
ideas and meanings. Artists who live in a particular place
are deeply embedded in its culture, and through their
work, they draw our attention to its unique wonders, while
also challenging and critiquing assumptions we may hold
about our surrounds. Without the cultural contribution
of the artists who live here, the South West would be a
poorer place. Together, the artists presented in South
West Art Now present a complex map of the geographical
imagination of the region. Their work is exploring,
creating, transforming and critiquing the culture of this
place, creating a richer region to live, work and visit, and
this benefits everyone – from long term residents to day
tripping visitors.
That we create place by enacting culture
within space is a fundamental tenant of contemporary
theories of placemaking. New developments in our
cities and towns recognise the importance of the arts
 8
in creating places where people want to live. This is
done through schemes such as Percent for Art, and
through meticulously designed and manicured leisure
areas, designed specifically for cultural participation.
However, these cultural offerings, by their very nature,
are created to define space in a particular way. Space
which is luxurious, space which is family friendly, space
which is a meeting place, but space where the end use
has already been defined before anyone begins to use
it. Often these works are created by artists who are
not from the place in question. When this is done well,
these artists will undertake a period of research, or of
community engagement and this outside perspective
is a valuable one, which can highlight issues, ideas and
important considerations within a community. However,
when done badly, this strategy can result in a cookie
cutter homogeneity of place, with each new development
modelled on the latest hit trend. Developers recognise
that having artists contribute to a place makes it more
valuable for others to live in. However, such offerings –
while an important part of placemaking – cannot come
close to representing a full understanding of place.
Spaces and places are always contested, there are
always multiple meanings, multiple understandings, and
multiple histories which are attached to any place and
which cannot be captured by a single representation. It
is only when we begin layering the artistic works of many
artists over the top of each other that we can begin to
get a sense of the visceral reality of place.
Exploring culture through the work of the artists
who live and work in a place and who continue to contribute
their ideas over time, offers another, and deeper way to
 9
value the arts and their contribution to an area. The works
of the artists in South West Art Now offer us a diverse and
multilayered snapshot of the South West region, through
the eyes of some of its most observant and engaged
residents. Together, these artists offer an exponential
expansion of the dominant cultural narrative of the South
West as a tourist destination – an idyllic place where visitors
can escape their cares in a haze of extraordinary scenery,
world class wines are artisanal food. Tourism provides the
livelihood for many in the South West – it is an essential
part of the region’s identity – but this narrative alone
presents only one facet of regional character. The works
in South West Art Now build on this and offer a multitude
of perspectives that enrich the possible understandings
of this place, both for those who live here and for those
who are visiting.
This understanding is deeply valuable to those
who visit the region because these competing, chaotic,
multidimensional perspectives are what make the place
unique. In a global culture that is more interconnected
than at any other time in history, there is a danger that
the detail of individual places can be lost. Navigating the
line between embracing global culture and maintaining a
regional diversity that is rooted in a deep understanding
of the history of place and the multiple narratives which
define it is no easy task. This balance is also in many
cases what makes a place worth visiting and artists are
well placed to do just this. Visitors flock to events such
as the Margaret River Open Studios, the Ferguson Valley
art trail and to arts institutions such as BRAG because
they are looking to deepen their understanding of place,
and they appreciate the ways that artists’ voices can help
 10
them do that. Through their work, artists make ideas
and conversations about regional identity accessible to
visitors, lending an insight into the deeper value of place.

Of course, these artistic insights are valuable not

just to those who visit the region, but also to those who call
this place their home. Together, they create a portrait of
community and place which makes room for the identities of
all who live here. South West Art Now attempts to capture a
sense of this democratic participation, presenting a survey
of works by artists living and working in the region. The
art presented in SWAN is multifarious, diverse – there are
conflicting voices, stories which are at odds with each other.
SWAN does not present a particular version of place – but a
slice of the conversation that happens within it. In this way,
the multiplicity of voices comes closer to approximating a
true community, than any contrived placemaking activity
ever could. There is no one clear narrative which ties
the works in this exhibition together - and this is how it
should be. Instead several themes emerge which hint at
the ongoing conversations and ideas which define our
region. Sometimes these themes intersect, sometimes
they overlap, or come into direct conflict with each other
and sometimes they may exist side by side. Within these
works, there is debate, controversy, contrast, love of place.
There is also a sense of the connections between this
place and the rest of the world – a bridge that connects
local and global culture without privileging one over the
other. Taken together, though, they hint at the diversity and
vibrancy of the community who call this place home and
mark a particular point in time in this conversation.
 11
In a region renowned for its spectacular natural
beauty, it is unsurprising that relationship to landscape
and the physical geography of place itself is one such
theme that emerges, alongside the particular ecologies
which foster one of the most biodiverse regions on the
entire planet. Artists such as Sue Kalab draw our attention
directly to this – focussing on the fragile beauty of the
place we call home, and quietly urging us to protect it.
Christine Blowfield celebrates the glorious light of the
South West in her luminous forest scenes, reflecting on
the visceral feeling of being immersed in the majestic
forests. Other artists such as Catherine Higham carefully
collect, assemble and document fragile remnants of the
landscape, drawing out their meaning and symbolism in
reference to the human condition. Anastasija Kormanyckyj
also focusses on details within the landscape, highlighting
the resonance of the bush in developing her creative
practice. Monique Tippett works directly with the
materials of the landscape to create her finely crafted
works. A deep feeling of meditation emanates from her
processes – leaving space for viewers to consider their
own relationship to the natural world.
Another strong theme which emerges in the
works of the SWAN artists, and which is resonant in
terms of understanding place is an exploration of the
contested historical narratives which underpin the
region. Cassandra Jetta is a Noongar woman whose
work celebrates the deep and enduring connection her
people have had to country for over 40 000 years. Her
paintings demonstrate the strength of Noongar Culture,
the continuous connection that her people have to this
region and the deep cultural knowledge which comes
 12
with this. Sarah Mills is another artist who engages with
the contested history of place and the narrative of the
disconnect between Indigenous and European Australia.
Mills draws on artefacts of the landscape, including
endemic flora and fauna to achieve this - tying her
explorations of culture to place in a highly specific way
that reminds us of the ongoing implications of these two
culturally different understandings of landscape.
Other artists in the exhibition use their work to bring
this region into dialogue with the rest of the world, thereby
exploring the ever evolving relationship between the
global and the local. Elisa Markes-Young tells us personal
stories of her relationship to place, through exploring
migration and the continuous pull of the original place.
Andrew Frazer’s work explores global culture in a different
way. Frazer has been instrumental in bringing numerous
high profile artists to create work in the region, and has
travelled extensively to create work all over the world
himself. His works for SWAN reflect this constant interplay
between being home and being away – he maintains his
cultural identity through the use of distinctly Australian
iconography and a direct relationship to travel in his work
which captures his global influences. Sarah McBride is
another artist who explores the history of place and its
connection to the wider world. Her work dramatizes the
Australian landscape with reference to the reclining nude
so favoured by the European masters. This incongruous
juxtaposition reflects on the continued negotiation of the
fit and relationship between these two cultures.
Many of the artists whose work is featured in
SWAN also have practices which extend beyond the
 13
gallery, where they are actively creating place in a very
public forum, and deliberately providing opportunities
for others to contribute to the conversation. Deanna
Mosca’s exquisite drawn thread canvasses which make
visible a range of emotional landscapes reflect themes
which are echoed in the many large scale murals she has
completed in the region. The sensitivity which defines
these works is also evident in the many creative projects
she has undertaken with members of the local community,
encouraging new voices to contribute to this dialogue of
place. Meanwhile the works of Serena MacLauchlan, which
delight in bold and tactile explorations of surface, explode
off the canvas into a range of participative installations
and workshops which encourage the public to intervene
directly and immediately in the physical environment of
their community, repurposing space for their own needs
or whims.
These are just a few of the many artistic voices
which are contributing to the richness of our cultural
landscape, but their multiple perspectives show us that
a singular meaning of place can never be defined, and
that as a community, the South West is richer for this.
The value of the arts in developing an understanding of
place is that individually, each artist asks questions which
together draw our eye to the incredible range of ideas
and identities which articulate a vision of place. We can
learn a lot about ourselves and the places we inhabit by
paying attention to the voices of its artists. They help
us to develop a geographical imagination of place which
is contested, messy and imprecise. South West Art Now
presents a shifting kaleidoscope made up of artists from
all walks of life whose insights expand upon the glossy
 14
tourist brochures and uncover
the tensions that are inherent in
the identity of this place. The
work that artists do in place and
about place is part of a feedback
loop which both analyses and
constructs culture, and we would
do well to support those artists
who live here – lest without them
we find a deterioration of soul so
great that we no longer know who
or where we are.
15
 16

Movement, maps and

materials: Commonalities

in the work of

South West artists.

By Alisa Blakeney

South West Art Now brings together artists living

in a triangle stretching from Byford in Perth’s East to the
Capes of the Leeuwin-Naturaliste Ridge to Manypeaks in
the Great Southern. In a patch of land that encompasses
a multitude of natural worlds, it is a complex task to tease
out the correspondences and similarities between the
artists who speak from this place.
Michel de Certeau writes about the practice of
place, distinguishing lieu, which is the place of inert bodies,
from espace, which is a space of action. Landscape and
movement are linked. Many of the artists in South West
Art Now use walking as a way of producing place, from the
many artists who walk their dogs daily through the forests,
to those who comb the beaches for discarded materials
 17
for their art. Francesco Careri writes: “By modifying the
sense of the space crossed, walking becomes man’s
first aesthetic act, penetrating the territories of chaos,
constructing an order on which to develop the architecture
of situated objects”.1 1
http://www.strozzina.org/
en/authors/francesco-
careri/

Walking is the way we first move through the

world and, though common to us all, it is an intensely
personal way to experience a place. The paths we travel
are individually determined and each person’s stride is as
distinctive as their footprint. Roslyn Hamdorf’s paintings
address this idea of finding the personal in the universal.
In her work, she explores the world that can be found in a
single footprint, examining grains of sand in minute detail.
Her paintings play with scale, flickering in our perception
between an aerial view, a microscopic detail, and the small
patch of beach that it represents.
Walking is a way to locate ourselves in a landscape.
It is an embodied experience, carried out from a particular
point of view that allows us to make sense of our situation.
Annette Davis makes work investigating the idea of
nature as a witness to history. This work acts as a map,
tracing both her movements through the terrain and her
interactions with the physical landscape. She approaches
her encounters with the natural elements of the landscape
on equal terms, creating direct charcoal rubbings of trees,
stains fabric by leaving it to soak the water of a spring,
and pierces these paper to outline the paths of her walks.
Through mapping the immediate physical aspects of
the environment, Davis’s work recognises the ability of
nature to absorb history, underlining the role of maps in
expressing culture and ideology.
 18
When terrains are mapped, there is a risk of
a singular history dominating and erasing conflicting
narratives. Molly Coy exploits the format of the artist book
to layer different systems of organised knowledge on top
of one another, using translucent paper and irregularly
shaped pages so that the viewer must read these systems
through one another. Indigenous knowledge is inscribed
alongside colonial cartographies, undoing universalism
and creating a doubling which erodes distinct lines of
division between identities.
This doubling is also present at the level of language.
In Binomial Tree Margaret Sanders creates an installation
using locally occurring Melaleuca. The first person to use
the name Melaleuca (from mélas meaning black and leukós
meaning white) was Carl Linnaeus, who was responsible
for formalising the modern system of naming organisms
we call binomial nomenclature. This system gives all living
things a Latin name composed of two parts, indicating
genus and species. Sanders doubles this again, drawing
attention to the Indigenous and common names of each
tree. She creates words on labels attached to black wood
using perforation: a form of writing that is both presence
and absence. This method underscores the brutality and
violence that are part and parcel of botany’s cutting and
poking. Binomial Tree reminds us of the importance of
dual naming in recognising Aboriginal knowledge, while
making reference to our history of imposing power on
Aboriginal people through labels and taxonomy.
Art has the power to transform place by awakening
inert objects. The material of an artwork is not a neutral
medium of transportation for a form or idea but is
 19
indissolubly interwoven with it. In South West Art Now, we
see the same materials recurring in the work of different
artists, which resonate with place and past. One of the
most immediately obvious is wood: the trees of the
South West are unique to this region and history has
accumulated within them. We see this most clearly in the
work of James Ryce. Like the work of many artists in this
exhibition, it is essential to Ryce’s coolimons and other
tools that they be carved from local wood. It is from this
that they derive their vibrant colours, their distinctive form
and functions, and their durability – able to be used for
hundreds of years without significant wear. Ryce collects
wood from trees that have naturally fallen or which have
been felled along fire breaks. His work engages with the
social context of wood and its association with histories of
environmental activism in this region. He both questions
our casual attitudes towards felling of ancient trees and
suggests an imminent future where we might need to rely
again on traditional tools.
Materials can become wilful agents within artistic
processes, enmeshing the viewer within a network of
connections. The power of materials to metamorphose
and develop uncanny lives of their own is demonstrated
in the work of artists who engage with discarded items
and waste. A number of artists in South West Art Now
appropriate material we might think of as rubbish, trash
or garbage. The motivations behind this are many and
can be read according to a specific social, cultural and
geographic context.
Tracie Anderson, Merle Davis and Patricia Hines
make work using an accumulation of flotsam, jetsam and
 20
debris they have gathered from beaches. Their materials
are the cast-off, broken, charred, weathered, lost and
fragmentary, which connect us in a system of flow. The
objects have been discarded, but they return to the South
West on the ocean’s currents. The works of these artists
have ecological overtones – they remind us that our
waste does not exist outside of time, but will come back
to us, if not directly, then through impact on our water, air
and quality of life. This call for ecological responsibility
privileges a truth contained within the waste materials
themselves. These works tear the materials out of their
context and arrange them in such a way as to create a
tactile intimacy.
Rebecca Corps’s work Looking In aims to avoid an
aestheticisation of waste. It speaks about the lavishness of
our lifestyle and the wastefulness of Western overproduction.
By focusing on the fashion industry, Corps reminds us of
the politics of geography that creates abundance in some
parts of the world and scarcity in others. Those who are on
the economic margins of society are forced to work with
waste, while others have the luxury of environmentalism.
Corps’ work emerges from the society of affluence that is
our situation in the South West.
Helen Seiver’s work also looks directly at the
cultural politics of location. She spends much of her time
walking through outback landscapes, particularly in the
Goldfields, seeking out objects, which she incorporates
into her work. Seiver is mindful of the specific genealogies
and legacies of the objects she finds, presenting them
as signifiers of place and era that give an insight into
particular social, domestic, and environmental issues. By
 21
introducing questions of subjectivity and particularity into
our understanding of a location her work recognises the
complex, shifting social relations that produce cultures,
subjects and identities.
How do we map and make sense of the multiple
tensions that shape the landscape of the South West? It
is a site that is marked by cultural loss and transience, and
one which both incorporates and is reconfigured by its
oppositions. Stefano Boeri writes:
2
Stefano Boeri, “Eclectic
Atlases”, 2003 “the images with which we continue to represent
the geography of our territory have become useless, along
with the rigid binary distinctions that we used to describe
them (centre/periphery; city/country, inside/outside, and
so forth).”2
The artists in South West Art Now work with
processes and materials that shape new ways of
understanding, producing and interpreting space. In this
way they are able to convey the multidimensional and
dynamic nature of this place.
22
 23

ARTISTS A - Z
 24

Crispin Born 1960, Dorset, United Kingdom;

lives and works in Bunbury.

Akerman

Crispin Akerman is one of Australia’s finest living still life

painters, working at the intersection of Western traditional
art and contemporary practice. His paintings concern
themselves with the household interior; the objects that
surround us in the domestic space; basic ritual acts like
eating and drinking; and the everyday world of routine
and repetition. The objects within his paintings also have
symbolic meaning, through a system of signification which
codes them in relation to other cultural concerns, for example
life, creativity, knowledge, abundance and family history.
Copper Bowl, Seasonal Flowers and Pears reflect the local
landscape of Bunbury, through the use of native flora and
objects evoking human presence like the bowl, jug and
textiles. By using these familiar items, Akerman creates
an intimate interior space, educing a sense of history and
cultural context which resonates with the viewer.
 25

Crispin Akerman, Copper Bowl, Seasonal Flowers & Pears, 2017, oil on linen, 410 x 610mm (Photo by Crispin Akerman)

Crispin Akerman works primarily in oil on

linen, focusing on still life painting. He
studied at Julian Ashton, Sydney and
Canberra Institute of Arts, graduating
in 1992. He has held regular solo
exhibitions, including at Gallows Gallery,
Perth, Beaver Galleries, Canberra and
Gallery One, Gold Coast and Jan Murphy
Gallery, Brisbane. His work is held in many
private and public collections, including
the Australian National University,
Artbank, Canberra Eye Hospital, New
Parliament House, City of Bunbury,
Voyager Estate, St John of God Hospital,
Murdoch and BHP Billiton.

crispinakerman.com.au
26

Alice Alder Born 1991, Busselton, Western

Australia; lives and works in Busselton.

Alice Alder, Be Here, 2017,
mixed medium on canvas, 760 x 760mm
27
Alice Alder’s landscapes explore slippages
in memory and the travelling body’s
perception of images. Be Here is based
on an amalgamation of memories and
impressions of the Yallingup region as seen
from a moving car’s window, with flashes
of colour, shape and line evoking textured
limestone and unsettled skies. The fading
boundaries between land, ocean and sky
slip into one another, just as memories blur
at the edges. The application of paint is
rough and energetic, with Alder using her
hands to grind the paint into the canvas. Her
brushstrokes are fast and full of vitality, like
a coming storm. As a synesthete, Alder is
heavily influenced by music while painting,
experiencing the tones and cadence as
visual information. Be Here expresses
repetitive rhythms ruptured by vocals
melody, and was painted while listening
to the alternative roots and folk-inspired
music of Tash Sultana.
Alice Alder is a full time graphic designer,
children’s book author and landscape
painter. She works predominantly in oils,
using house paint, lacer and acrylic to
build texture and energy in her paintings.
She graduated from Edith Cowan
University in 2015 with a double major
in visual arts and media studies. During
her studies she was recognised on the
Dean’s List for academic achievement,
and won the ECU Undergraduate Art and
Writing Competition Prize. Her first solo
exhibition was at the Old Courthouse
Gallery, ArtGeo Cultural Complex,
Busselton in January 2018.
 28
Tracie
Anderson
Tracie Anderson is a ceramic and mixed media
artist, who works mainly with porcelain and
found objects from the ocean and shore. She
has a Diploma in Visual Art and has shown
her work in many exhibitions, including a solo
exhibition, Bleached Fragments, at ArtGeo
Cultural Complex, Busselton in 2014, and Salt:
The Blue Series 2018, with Sharon Hinchcliffe
at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery. She was
highly commended in the 2012 Signature
South-West exhibition and twice won first
prize for 3D work at the City of Albany Art
Prize, in 2006 and 2009.
tracieandersonceramics.com
Born 1961, Bunbury, Western Australia; lives and works in Bunbury.
Tracie Anderson combs the beaches of Western
Australia, from Albany to Broome, finding and
collecting organic objects. She incorporates these
objects into her ceramic artworks celebrating
the beauty and diversity of our oceans and
shorelines. This theme is reinforced through the
recurrence of motifs of boats, seashells, and an
aquatic colour palette. By highlighting the unique
forms and patterning of things like worn wood
and frayed nets, Anderson draws out the beauty
in that which has been discarded, allowing us
to view these objects in a new light. Her works
in South West Art Now include three cylindrical
vessels, which can be interpreted as tall vases.
Sections of the glazed porcelain have been cut
away and replaced with a collage of found flotsam
and jetsam, sewn together onto a mesh backing.
By requiring the viewer to closely investigate their
interiors to see the full work, these vases create
an analogy for the ocean; we are encouraged to
modify our shallow perceptions, and to instead
see the depths of its complexity.
Tracie Anderson, Untitled (work in progress), 2018,
porcelain and found objects, three vessels:
Ø 300 x 400, Ø220 x 320, Ø180 x 200mm
29
30
Tom
Ansell
Tom Ansell is a draftsman, painter and
sculptor with a focus on mark-making
and spontaneous line work. In 2016
he graduated from a Bachelor of Arts:
Honours with a Visual Art Major at Edith
Cowan University, Bunbury. Since 2009,
he has regularly exhibited throughout the
South West as well as interstate and won
numerous awards for his work. His most
recent body of work is concerned with
the living subject, imaginary subjects,
and en plein air landscapes.
Born 1991, Busselton, Western Australia;
lives and works in Busselton.
Tom Ansell’s paintings and drawings explore
the expressive qualities of mark-making. The
landscapes Twirl Cloud and Dry Landscape
represent his first foray into painting the South-
West en plein air. In these works, Ansell extracts the
essential from the sensational experience of the
landscape, expressing these non-representational
qualities through the materiality of his painting.
Rather than painting the controlled seascapes to
the West of his Busselton studio, Ansell turns to
the facing swampland, exploring a land dominated
by movement, and large, ever-changing skies.
The expressiveness of his mark making and
brushstrokes establishes a mutable environment,
alive and resistant to human containment.
Ansell’s paintings are representations of his
immediate recordings when in the landscape
and exist without revision or afterthought.
However, his process is not rushed and arbitrary,
but deliberate and reflective. Ansell works in a
disciplined way, experimenting with different
brushes, painting techniques and colour to
understand the specific logics of the paint
he uses. Through this deep concern with the
materiality of paint, he is able to elaborate a form
of intense and arresting sensation, distanced
from traditional modes of representation.
Tom Ansell, Twirl Cloud (left) and Dry Landscape (right), 2017, oil on linen, 135 x 180mm
 32

Christine Born 1955, Denmark, Western Australia;

lives and works in Kendenup.

Baker

Christine Baker is a descendant of

convicts transported to the Frankland
River area in the 1850s and her mother’s
parents were part of the group settlement
scheme in Demark from 1927. Schooling
began in Denmark, continuing in Mount
Barker until Christine completed year
10. On leaving school, Christine worked
various jobs including farmhand,
rouseabout and fruitpicker. At the age
of 18 she met and married Robert Ball
and moved to Newdegate to help run a
shearing business. This union produced
four children. Christine separated from
her husband at age 34, taking the
children to Narrogin. She enrolled in a
preliminary certificate in Art and Design
at C. Y. O’Connor College of TAFE,
completing studies in 1995. Christine
now rents a farm cottage 8kms from
Kendenup and dedicates most of her
time to making art.

Christine Baker, An Uneasy Existence (detail), 2017,

acrylic on canvas, clay glaze, oxiden found objects,
drawing collage photocopy, dimensions variable
 33

Christine Baker makes art in dialogue with the

world around her. Embracing political themes,
nature, memory and emotion, her work finds
expression in clay, acrylic paint and printed zines.
An Uneasy Existence is an installation which
replicates a domestic setting, with comfortable
chair, pleasing picture on the wall, and a
ceramic cat settled on the floor. On a nearby
table is a collection of zines (small-circulation,
lo-fi publications), which the viewer is invited
to spend time sitting and reading. These zines
range in topic from gun control, to same sex
marriage, to newspapers for dogs, each one
provocative, sincere and deeply funny. Initially
suggestive of the security and embrace of
home, this work fosters an undertone of unease
and discomfort, through its uncanny elements
and subtly disproportionate sizing. It questions
any notion of stable identity, reminding us that
home, too, can be a menacing place.
 34
Christine
Blowfield
Christine Blowfield works in acrylic and
pastel, always depicting flora of the
South West. She exhibits regularly and
her awards include the Vasse Art Award
in 2012; Highly Commended Award
at Nannup Art Award in 2015; Highly
Commended at Gosnells Art Award in
2015; Harvey Shire Acquisition Award in
2015; and the Perth Royal Show Open
Art Award People’s Choice in 2015.
Born Bunbury, Western Australia; lives and works in Argyle.
Christine Blowfield loves the wildflowers, gum
trees and colours of the Australian bush, often
reproducing the unique light and flora of the
South West in her paintings. Her intention is to
capture the essence of brief moments of joy or
pleasure that are experienced by escaping into
nature; she paints rays of light passing through
tree branches “as if you’re laying on the ground
looking up on a Sunday afternoon”.
There is a performative dimension to her painting,
with Blowfield placing importance on the
process of painting the work, acting as medium
and facilitator in giving voice to her environment.
While her completed works are highly finished,
often with fine detailing in gold leaf, Blowfield is
not precious about her art, often painting over
a finished work if it remains in her studio for any
extended length of time.
In Endless Serenity, Blowfield has painted
directly onto three layers of clear acrylic plastic,
to enhance the sense of depth in the painting.
Alternating textured paint of the foreground with
clear acrylic draw the eye into the work, pulling
the viewer into the experience of the landscape.
 35

Christine Blowfield, studio detail, 2017

 36

Jeana Born 1950, Donnybrook, Western

Australia; lives and works in Bunbury.

Castelli

Jeana Castelli, Meltdown, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 1052 x 920mm


As the child of Italian migrants, growing up
in regional Western Australia, much of Jeana
Castelli’s past work was directed at resolving
her Italian heritage with a foreign landscape.
Her current body of paintings is focused on the
fragmented connection between humans and
their natural habitat, expressing despair at the
tragedy of environmental degradation.
There are no figures in Castelli’s landscapes, but
the human is omnipresent. The body becomes
part of the living world, not as a central figure in
the landscape, but instead as one of the many
parts of the environment which must interact and
coexist. Her paintings express an affinity and
connection with nature, encouraging a sense
of responsibility, and awareness of the plight of
our environment. They also play the role of an
inventory or document about the state of the
land, capturing the chaos and complexity of the
earth’s dynamic systems.
37
Jeana Castelli works primarily in acrylic
on canvas, with a focus on the Australian
landscape. She studied Visual Arts at
the Claremont School of Art and TAFE
in Perth, Western Australia. She has
held three solo exhibitions: at Bunbury
Regional Art Gallery in 2013, Casella’s
Koombana Bay in 2009, and Artery
Gallery and Studio, Bunbury in 2004,
as well as exhibiting in the Mandjar,
Minnawarra, City of Melville, Vasse and
City of Busselton Art Awards. Her work
has appeared at Agora Gallery in Chelsea,
New York in 2015 and in Sydney-based
magazine Art/Edit in 2016.
Meltdown has portents of destruction, with a
roiling darkness in the upper corner threatening
to besiege the landscape. The palette of flesh
tones, which cut a swathe through the centre of
the painting, evokes the appearance of cataclysm
or a chasm opening in the earth. Castelli reveals
both the energy and beauty of the natural world,
while showing it in a condition of critical change.
 38

Rebecca Born 1976, Perth, Western Australia; lives and works in Bunbury.

Corps

Rebecca Corps, studio view, 2017

Rebecca Corps recontextualises waste products and mundane

materials to create installations, sculptures and three-
dimensional objects. With its use of the discarded and the
ephemeral, Corp’s work is disruptive and transgressive, engaging
with narratives of social and political dissent.
Waste has ideological associations, resulting from societies of
mass-consumption and hyper-production using cheap labour.
Corp’s work Looking In highlights the volume of waste produced
by the fashion industry, and the environmental consequences of
our disposing of this waste in the ground. The work mimics the
form of a rock or boulder, with a frame fashioned from steel rod
and chicken wire. Onto this frame, Corps has woven grass from
the underside to meet with recycled fabrics coming down from
the top. These two conflicting materials compete for space in
an expression of the tension between human and environment.
 39

Rebecca Corps combines drawing,

painting, sculpture and installation in her
work, with a focus on the inclusion of
recycled textiles. Her passion for textiles
and work as a seamstress over 20 years
led to an interest in textile art and she
completed a Bachelor of Arts at Edith
Cowan University, South West in 2016.
As part of her honours in visual art she
participated in a collaborative public
artwork: The Rescue on Koombana
Drive, Bunbury. Rebecca has exhibited
in various group exhibitions including
the Bunbury Biennale 2017, South West
Survey 2016, WAFTA TwentyOne, 2016
and the Wearable Art Showcase in
Mandurah, 2016.

Rebecca Corps, Looking In (detail), 2017,

steel, grass, fabric, 800 x 1000 x 800mm
(Photo by Rebecca Corps)
 40
Molly Coy
Molly Coy is a painter working with
watercolour and acrylics. After more than
two decades of working and teaching
in visual arts, Molly studied bookbinding
in 2000, and spent the next 15 years
restoring books. She has also applied her
book making skills into the creation of
individual and limited edition artist books,
combining mixed media and print-making
within the book structure. She has
collaborated with photographer/textile
artist Unhi Mook; artist/printmaker Leon
Pericles, and letterpress historian/printer
Dr Claire Bolton. Her work is held in the
National Library of Australia, State Library
of WA Heritage Collection, and the City
of Busselton and Town of Cambridge Art
Collections.
mollycoy.com
Born Hamilton, South Lanarkshire; lives
and works in Cowaramup.
As a painter, Molly Coy has pushed her practice
beyond the conventional understanding of
painting, experimenting with mixed media to
develop more abstract concepts, and employing
her professional experience as a book binder in
the construction of traditional, hand-sewn artist
books. Coy has a love of texture, and finding
ways to create unusual surfaces is an integral
part of her work. She works quickly and intuitively,
reacting to nature. Her starting point is always the
desire to tell a visual story, exploring the interplay
between image and text.
In Shared Coast, Coy responds the concept of
place, through original, hand-sewn artist books in
an edition of three. The book explores six coastal
sites, tracing the shoreline between the Capes
on the South West coast. It investigates shared
understandings of our place in this region, time
and area, acknowledging the original inhabitants
and the later pioneering history of the land. The
colour scheme reflects the six seasons which we
experience annually, with the shoreline as an ever-
present motif that recurs throughout the books’
pages. Two mixed media paintings, born of the
book’s images, reflect the journey and complete
the cycle.
Coy begins her artist books by making a visual
diary, then a dummy of the book structure,
followed by painting the individual pages. She
gradually works the surfaces of each page,
using embossing, abrading, cutting, printing,
and collage. The result is a visual and tactile
experience, allowing both artist and viewer a
glimpse into another world.
 41
Molly Coy, Lands and Capes (work in progress),
2017/18, artist book, works on paper, 380 x 820mm
 42

Annette Born Perth, Western Australia; lives and works in Albany.

Davis
The idea of nature as a witness to history has Annette Davis is interested in finding
been the focus of Annette Davis’s ongoing ways to express the layers of experience
within a landscape. She works in a
artistic investigations into two locations – the range of media including drawing,
coast of King George Sound, Albany, and the printmaking, photography, painting and
Murchison River in the State’s mid-west. Sentry large scale frottage, through which she
captures an impression of forms of
is inspired by a particular tree located where nature. Davis exhibits regularly in the
the bush meets the sandy beach of Whaler’s Great Southern in group exhibitions, as
Cove, a small bay at the south-western edge part of MIX Artists, and as an individual,
of King George Sound, Albany. This tuart tree and recently had a solo exhibition
Continuity at the Vancouver Arts Centre,
Eucalyptus Gomphocephala has stood as Albany. Davis was awarded the Shire of
a sentry to this bay for hundreds of years, a Manjimup Acquisitive Award in 2015.
witness to all the experiences at this shoreline www.annettedavisart.com
and in the waters it looks out to. Who has sat
under its shady canopy?
Whaler’s Cove, as the name suggests, was a
rudimentary onshore whaling operation in the
1850s. The massive flat bank of granite upon
which whales were carved up, is now used as
a convenient platform from which to fish, and
families enjoy the clear turquoise waters of this
sheltered bay. The ridge above the beach is rich
with evidence of Aboriginal culture, including
lizard traps, gnamma holes and markings in the
granite surface.
The ridges and grooves of the bark of the tree’s
trunk and branches are the basis of these
white charcoal drawings on black canvas discs.
The descriptive lines suggest markings from
topographical maps and maritime charts, and
other lines follow the course of tracks made
across the dunes and ridges by Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal people.
 43
Annette Davis, Sentry (details), 2017,
charcoal pencil on canvas on board, 2300 x 1700mm
 44

Merle Topsi Born 1948, Collie, Western Australia; lives and works in Bunbury.

Davis

Merle Topsi Davis, studio detail, 2017


Merle Davis specialises in textiles and,
after several trips overseas studying
other cultures forms of basket making,
she has developed her own style
using whatever is available from the
surrounding environment, including
grasses, vines, roots, discarded cloth,
wire, cord and rope. She studied at
Claremont Teachers College, James St.
Technical School, Secondary Teachers
College, Nedlands and W.A.I.T, graduating
as a Secondary Art teacher in 1968. Past
exhibitions include three South West
Surveys at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery;
Sculptures by the Bay, Dunsborough;
Journey of the Intrepid Woman at
ArtGeo Cultural Centre, Busselton in
2012; and Maunsell and Wickes Gallery
in Paddington, Sydney.
45
Merle Topsi Davis makes fibre textile works,
often focusing on environmental themes.
Sea Enemies is woven from fishing ropes, nets
and floats that have been gathered on beach
walks in Western Australia, after having been
discarded by crayfishermen. The vessels mimic
the form of sea anemones: sedentary marine
animals that attach themselves to the coral reef
and sea floor. These unique creatures catch
fish in their tentacles that have stinging polyps.
They are named after the terrestrial Anemone
flower and are under threat, along with all other
marine life, due to the oceans being full of
carelessly disposed waste and plastics.
Galvanised by the knowledge that by 2050
there will be more plastics in the oceans than
fish, Davis hopes to draw attention to the plight
of those living under the sea - the plants
entangled in nets and ropes, the animals
swallowing micro particles of plastic, and the
reefs covered in ropes and unable to grow. These
distinctive structures function as a mnemonic
device, encouraging the viewer to retrieve and
dispose of any plastics or ropes found whilst at
the beach, lest it be washed back into the ocean
in a storm.
 46

Tony Davis Born 1948, Wyalkatchem, Western Australia;

lives and works in Bunbury.
 47

Tony Davis, Mantle, 2017,

Jarrah, 1800 x 450 x 400mm,
(Photo by Tony Davis)

Tony Davis began his career as a painter, but his
move to the South West led to him increasingly
using sustainable materials such as timber
salvaged from fires and windfalls in sculpture and
furniture-making. His paintings and sculpture
have been exhibited together, with one being
an extension of the other in expressing his
deep fascination with the human psyche and
relationships with the environment.
Mantle references an ongoing relationship with
nature on a spiritual level, which is evident in
creative expressions throughout history. Through
minimal modelling of a hollowed Jarrah log,
salvaged from a firewood mill operation, Davis
highlights both the seductive language of wood
and forces of nature, like termite activity and
fire, to create a simple human presence, without
effacing the original tree form. A combination of
textured finishes and eroded, burnished surfaces
adds to the allure of the tactile, appealing to an
engagement of our senses.
Davis writes: “as in most of my work, I endeavour
to invoke a sense of mystery, of the enigmatic, to
encourage the broadest possible interpretation.”
Tony Davis is a painter, sculptor and fine
wood craftsman, working mainly with
sustainable timber salvaged from fires
and windfalls. He graduated from W.A.I.T.
in 1972 and taught for many years in
both public and private schools, and at
Curtin University. He has exhibited solo in
seven exhibitions and many group shows,
including in Paddington, Sydney. Since
2010, he has participated in Sculpture
by the Sea fourteen times: in Cottesloe,
Bondi and Aarhus, Denmark. His work
is held in the collections of Minderoo,
Kerry Stokes, Curtin University, Supreme
Court of WA and numerous private and
corporate collections.
www.tonydavisart.com
 48
Aimee
Dickson
Aimee Dickson makes pen and pencil
drawings, exploring text, colour and
shape. Diagnosed with autism in early
childhood, Aimee is non-verbal and her
drawings are a vital form of expression
and communication. For the past six
years, she made work during weekly
sessions with mentor Yael Harris. Her
first solo exhibition Interpretations was
at Painted Tree Gallery in Northcliffe
in 2012. In 2016 Aimee illustrated and
published a children’s book, #Harmony
Tweet, in collaboration with Melbourne
author Diane Jackson-Hill. In 2017 she
won the As We Are Regional Art Award
with her work Emu.
artimee.com.au
Born 1992, Northcliffe, Western Australia;
lives and works in Northcliffe.
Aimee Dickson makes character-based
illustrations in pen and pencil as a primary
form of expression. Often she will start with
a reference image, be it a photograph of an
animal or a painting from the canon of art
history. Her interpretations of these images are
highly eloquent, capturing facial expressions
and mannerisms in a minimum of strokes. The
works exhibited in South West Art Now build on
the fundamental element of Dickson’s practice
– the sausage-like shapes which underlie her
work in its rawest form. When she works without
a reference image, Dickson builds up pages of
sketches layered with works and figures that
form an extended taxonomy of her internal world.
These works exhibit the repetitive patterns and
visual density that is common to a great deal of
the work done by autistic artists, and which has
been related to the overwhelming auditory and
tactile input these artists experience in their daily
life. Dickson’s artistic practice is an essential tool
in providing her a meditative space, where she
can become deeply absorbed in building up
colours and forms. The resulting drawings have
a dynamic power, and give viewers a fascinating
insight into her experience of the world.
 49

Aimee Dickson, My Inner World #1-6, 2018, pen, pencils, texta on paper, 400 x 500mm each
50
Cynthia Dix
Cynthia Dix works with diverse media,
painting, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture
and glass, inspired by the birds, flora and
other fauna surrounding her. She has
undertaken courses at Fremantle Arts
Centre and Claremont Art School, and
studied sculpture and painting as part of
a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual Arts at
Edith Cowan University, South West. She
has exhibited in group exhibition Fremantle
Arts Centre, Collie Art Gallery and Royal
Agricultural Art Show, and has had solo
exhibitions at ArtGeo Cultural Centre,
Busselton in 2015, and as part of the
Dardanup Art Trail in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Born Perth, Western Australia; lives and works in Mullalyup.
Cynthia Dix lives on a farm on the banks of the
Preston River, where she is constantly inspired by
the birds, flora and other fauna which surround her.
Dix is influenced by the work of Australian women
artists, Margaret Preston, Kathleen O’Connor and
Margaret Olley, and Preston’s challenge to create
an “Australian Art”, focusing on Australian colours,
flora and fauna. Her work aims to express the
beauty, harshness and fragility of what we may
find in the natural bushland of South Western
Australia, including dazzling wildflowers in the
months following winter: bright gold hibbertia,
brilliant, seemingly impossible complex grevillea
flowers, delicate clematis, brilliant banksias, ruby
and emerald kangaroo paws. Most of these wither
and die within moments of being picked.
Like the exquisite work of the painters of the
Dutch golden age, who would create impossible
arrangements of flowers which would never flower
together, Flora Australis is a fantasy of what we
think we might like to take and keep. In the old
tradition, each individual flower carried a secret
message while memento mori reminded the viewer
of the fragility of life. The bee and butterflies in this
painting are reminders of this fragility. The Chinese
dragon vase is a memento of Dix’s grandmother,
an extraordinarily resilient woman, who was born
in Western Australia in the late 1800s. The open
mouthed dragon on the Chinese vase, reminds us
of the deadly things that creep and frighten us. We
are surrounded by both beauty and danger here
and must always remain aware of our place and role
in its protection.
Cynthia Dix, Flora Australis, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1220 x 900mm
 52

Jenni Born 1958, Perth, Western Australia;

lives and work in the Ferguson Valley.

Doherty

Jenni Doherty, Oceans Of Uncertainty - Big Bad Night, 2017, oil, lino, gold leaf on canvas, 18 panels, 300 x 300mm each
 53

Jenni Doherty is well known in the South West Jenni Doherty is a painter and printmaker
for her decorative paintings, informed by the whose work is informed by the use of
pattern and a fascination with time and
use of pattern, both current and historical. Her repetition. She exhibits regularly at
works in South West Art Now are an intimate Yallingup Galleries and is represented
and personal response to the passing of time, in Perth by Linton and Kay Galleries. In
2012, she was the overall winner of the
as it relates to daily experience, memory, family South West Survey at Bunbury Regional
and mortality. The paintings incorporate print, Art Gallery. She has previously taught
with the patterning of lino blocks emerging from at South West College of TAFE and
the surface of the paintings, under densely- Edith Cowan University, South West,
and currently teaches Studio Sessions
layered oil and acrylic paint and gold leaf. The Classes and other workshops from her
process of their making is time consuming and Wellington Mill studio.
repetitive. Long lines score the works horizontally http://jennidoherty.com.au/
and are connected by hundreds of short dashes
which bring to mind a tally of days, or stitches
in an elaborate veil of lace. This veil obscures
the underground of the painting from view, like
the haze that a failing memory casts on past
experiences. The result is a series of paintings
which invite the viewer to experience the currents
of time differently. The patient activity of mark-
making, which is undertaken in a meditative state
with no concern for the passing minutes and
hours, invites a reciprocal lack of haste on the
part of the viewer. Through extended viewing,
the full density and richness of these paintings is
revealed to us.
 54

Yvonne Born 1948, Perthshire, Scotland; lives and works in Bridgetown.

Dorricott

Yvonne Dorricott is a printmaker whose

The main research in Yvonne Dorricott’s work
involves an understanding of human relationships
with the natural world, including land use and
connectedness. She explores these issues
through installations, printmaking, artist’s books
and drawing.
work is part of an ongoing research into
environmental issues of land use and
connection to the environment. She
completed a Master of Arts at Curtin
University in 2000 and has lectured at
TAFE and Edith Cowan University, South
West. Group exhibitions include Bunbury
Biennale in 2013, and Lessons in History
Vol. II Democracy at grahame galleries +
editions in 2012. She regularly exhibits
with the South West Printmakers, including
exhibitions at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery,
Collie Art Gallery, ArtGeo Cultural Complex
and Lyndendale Gallery. Her solo exhibition
Credo was at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery
in 2011.

Coastal Flags is about the coastal areas of the

South West, in particular Broke Inlet. The natural
forces of movement of land, wind and water,
carried in strong currents from fresh rainwater to
the oceans. This necessary movement of water
and land gives birth to many plants and animals
of both land and sea. The Inlet traps rainwater
runoff until it can hold no more, then will burst
through the cut to the ocean, to flush out all that
has lived and given birth in the waters since the
last flush.
This flooding and intermingling of the fresh water
and salt is a key theme in Dorricott’s work. Her
process uses salt as an integral component,
bringing it on top of the burnt umbers and blacks
in her prints, as to create the white. Her work
develops through constant experimentation and
play, evoking the feeling of constant flow and
change that is characteristic of Broke Inlet. The
final work mimics the form of prayer flags, acting
as an invocation for the continuing existence of
this magnificent place.
 55

Yvonne Dorricott, Coastal Flags (detail), 2017, etching on BFK paper, woodcut on dyed fabric, 1800 x 2000mm (Photo by Yvonne Dorricott)
56

Tanya Born 1962, Perth, Western Australia; lives and works in Bunbury.

Downes

Growing up as a young girl, Tanya Downes watched

her artisan grandfather hand carve and turn wood
into remarkable functional and non-functional
works of art. As a Secondary Art Teacher and
fostering the same passion for design, and in
particular working with her hands, her personal art
practice reveals a love of experimentation across
a range of media. Common threads emerging in
much of her work are a fascination with the human
form and the use of wood as a material.
Life in the Balance explores the fragility of life,
human mortality, past and future environmental
degeneration and political upheaval. It shows a
world where a rapidly expanding population and
technological global infrastructure means balance
is tethered above a very fine line.

Tanya Downes has a practice

incorporating sculpture, woodcarving,
printmaking, painting and textiles. She
has a Bachelor of Social Science/
Visual Art (2003) and a Graduate
Diploma in Secondary Education
specialising in Visual Art (2009) from
Edith Cowan University. She was the
commissioned artist for the opening
of Art Extraordinaire 2017, and has also
exhibited in Art Extraordinaire 2016;
SW Art Now 2016; and Artists at the
Helm, Bunbury Regional Art Gallery in
2015. She was awarded the Runner-up
People’s Choice Award at The Survey
2013 at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery.

Tanya Downes, Life in the Balance, 2018, wood/mixed media, 580 x 350 x 350mm
 58

Paul Elliott Born 1972, Perth, Western Australia;

lives and works in Wickepin.

Paul Elliott, Handbasket, 2017, LPG gas bottle-cylinder, Paul Elliott, Feather Bowl, 2017,
300 x 240 x 240mm LPG gas bottle-cylinder, 120 x 240 x 240mm

Paul Elliott, Fruit Bowl, 2017, LPG gas bottle-cylinder, 140 x 240 x 240mm

Paul Elliott has a materially-driven,
process-based practice, working in
metal, incorporating jewellery and
industrial sculpture. His practice draws
on knowledge gained through twenty
years of experience as a fabrication
engineer. Since May 2017, he has been
working on a series of sculptures and
lanterns which use incinerated LPG
gas cylinders. Elliott has exhibited with
Ellenbrook Arts, Wickepin Art Group, and
commercially as ReKindled Metal. He has
received several public art commissions,
completing a series of installations for
the Shire of Wickepin, and the Gun
Carriage Seat at Shire of Narrogin. His
work is held in various private collections.
59
In his sculptures, Paul Elliott draws out the
organic properties of metal, allowing plant and
animal forms to emerge as he works. His work
is process-driven, often beginning with a desire
to explore the limits of how metal can express
itself as a material. He uses all kinds of metal to
construct animals, striving to capture a natural
asymmetry and avoid any straight lines. The
precision of this work, with very few visible welds
and close attention to detail, is contrasted by
the more fluid style of Elliott’s sculptures using
LPG gas cylinders. These works are made entirely
from cylinders of the sort used in domestic
applications. These cylinders are often used once
and then discarded, as they cannot be recycled
through ordinary means. In order to re-use them
in his work, Elliott drills a hole through the bottom
and incinerates the cylinders to remove paint
and remnants of gas which imbue the steel of
the interior. With a plasma cutter, he inscribes the
metal with patterns inspired by the peach, almond
and nectarine blossoms he finds in his garden,
and other natural features of his environment.
Elliott’s work finds value in overlooked objects,
drawing our attention to the hours of mechanised
labour from which the complex curves of these
cylinders derive.
 60

Ashlee Born 1994, Busselton, Western Australia;

lives and works in Capel.

Faber

Ashlee Faber’s work addresses the way in which

mental illness can distort self-identity, and
methods for coping with this distortion. Untitled,
2017 is made up of three circles of equal size,
constructed using fumage on heavy litho paper.
This method involves the artist dragging a flame
across the paper, leaving a delicate layer of soot.
Faber then makes impressions of her own body,
creating ethereal white marks in the dark ground.
Hand cut patterning reprises the motif of the
crescent form that is common across much of
Faber’s work.
The result is a self-portrait that is not so much
reminiscent of an individual as of a human
landscape. Faber’s body becomes an abstraction,
a privileged space on which the artist can inscribe
meaning. The scorched paper and careful
The work is also a reminder of mortality, harking
incisions are suggestive of emotional as well as
back to the historical idea of self-portrait as
physical scars. Blight and beauty are united in
preserving the body from decay by fixing it in a
this work, with the tiny intimacies of the artist’s
single moment. Viewed from above, the work is
mark-making visible in its inky shadows.
disturbingly reminiscent of a burial space, and of
bones rotting back into earth. Faber presents the
body as a site where intangible ideas of identity,
mortality and memory are made manifest. The
artist pursues these themes with delicate acuity,
Ashlee Faber is an emerging artist
interested in working with experimental never forcing her work to fit an idea, but presenting
processes as well as realistic painting. unapologetically sensual exploration of the human
Her current work focuses predominantly form that is both haunting and lyrical.
on the themes of mental health, identity
and family. She has exhibited work at
Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, as part of
the Studio and Professional Practice,
and Painting 2 exhibitions in 2016, and
is a finalist for The Shirl National Youth
Portrait prize in 2017. She is currently
in her second year at Edith Cowan
University, South West, studying a
Bachelor of Arts majoring in Visual Arts.
 62

Renee Born Malaysia; lives and works in Goode Beach.

Farrant

Renee Farrant, concerning water, 2017, roots of plants, 150 x 150mm

 63

Renee Farrant uses pure cotton pulp

paper in hand-cut sculptures ranging
from dramatic gowns to intricate carved
figurines. Group exhibitions include
Reservoir, Albany Town Hall as part of
Albany Arts Festival 2018; HomeFRONT,
Art on the Move Touring Exhibition,
2016-2018; and Stations of the Cross
2012, Wesley Church, Perth. Her work
Tree of Life won first prize at the 2011
Signature South West Award at ArtGeo
Cultural Complex and was acquired for
the Shire of Busselton art collection.

www.reneefarrant.com

Renee Farrant is known for her intricate and Farrant writes:

labour intensive artworks made from cutting
and folding paper. In her work for South West “The body of roots,
Art Now, her chosen medium is instead plant Mother’s water bearer,
roots, which she collects from the dunes near
her studio. Her rationale for using these is a Is the anchor in the dirt,
response to global strife concerning water, our
the lifeline of blossoms.
oceans, and access to clean water, rising to
the challenge of using a material that is ‘water- It plays the dark protagonist
adding’ rather than ‘water-consuming.
largely out of sight,
Farrant’s work presents a material example of
an aesthetics attentive to the interdependence gently unyielding.
of human and environment. Flowing between Its work is divine.”
and through matter, bodies and borders, water
challenges humanist understandings of the
unitary body. Farrant’s work weaves the body of a
mother and child, rejecting a logic of sharp-edged
self-sufficiency and instead encouraging us to
remember the bodies which bring us into being.
Like the plant roots which connect animal bodies
to topographical watercourses, water connects us
to worlds beyond our human selves.
 64

Andrew Born 1985, Bunbury, Western Australia;

lives and works in Bunbury.

Frazer

Andrew Frazer, Hope on the Horizon (detail), 2018,

acrylic and ink on cold pressed paper, 950 x 720mm
(Photo by Andrew Frazer)
 65

Andrew Frazer makes art about shared stories and

experiences that connect us all. His work is often a catalyst
for strengthening and developing community and a sense
of place. In his illustrations, he is concerned with articulating
a symbology of the universal, using a visual language that
often incorporates typography and animal characters.
These enigmatic characters are a vessel through which
Frazer articulates emotional depth and a sense of hope
for the future.
Of his work Hope on the Horizon, Frazer writes:
“Though the pressures of life can feel overwhelming
at times… there is always hope. Unfortunately too many
individuals lose sight of this reality and sadly choose
to exit this world before their time. My desire through
this artwork is to encourage those who are suffering in
silence to speak out and be heard. Don’t harbour those
internal fears in shame or embarrassment. Choose to
embrace vulnerability, hold onto that small flame and
begin your journey of recovery one day at a time. We
are all in it together.”

Andrew Frazer is a multi-disciplinary artist, whose practice

includes public murals, illustration, hand lettering, design,
and arts management (as founder of artist-run initiative
Six Two Three Zero). His narrative-based art draws on
shared experiences of hope, despair, redemption, pain and
forgiveness. His most recent solo exhibition was Someone
Else Somewhere Else at Turner Galleries, Northbridge in 2017.
His work has been commissioned by VPG Property, Custard
Cider, Freedom, First Nature, Kidsafe WA, Holstee, Southern
Cross Austereo and FORM, as well as a number of local
government clients. In 2017, Frazer illustrated the book Drawn
Onward by Meg McKinlay for Fremantle Press.

andrewfrazerdesigns.com
 66

Richard Born 1955, Perth, Western Australia;

lives and works in Noggerup.

Fry

Richard Fry’s most recent work stems from a

deeply personal project, building individualised
gravestones for his deceased parents. Through
this process, he has traced back his family
history, trying to pick his way through tangled
and competing narratives, and draw truths from
his own DNA. The gravestones are constructed
of press-moulded ceramic tiles, using moulds
created by members of Fry’s extended family,
as well as tiles imprinted with natural patterning.
Fry bases the patterns he draws on the diatom:
a microscopic single-celled algae, housed
in a glass shell, which lives in most natural
pools of water. During the nineteenth century,
Victorians expressed their fascination with these
microscopic creatures by creating intricate
arrangements of diatoms, as one would a
bouquet of flowers. Fry’s use of the diatom form
in his work creates a link between recent history,
the silica surface of the ceramics and the water
from which all life springs.

Richard Fry has a Diploma of Fine Art

from Claremont School of Art, 1981 and
a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts with
distinction, majoring in Ceramic/Glass
from Curtin University of Technology,
1994. He works in glass, ceramic
and welded three dimensional steel
drawings. Exhibitions include Sculpture
at Bathers, 2013 and 2015; Mandorla
Art Award, 2010 and Strange Fruit,
Kidogo Art House, Fremantle, 1999. His
work is held in the collections of the Art
Gallery of Western Australia, University
of Western Australia, Curtin University,
Royal Perth Hospital and the Janet
Holmes à Court Collection.

www.fryart.com
 67

Richard Fry,
work in progress, 2017
 68

Anne Born Hamburg, Germany; lives and works in Kendenup.

Grotian

Anne Grotian, Shades of the past, 2017, installation, dimensions variable


Anne Grotian works in installation, clay
sculpture and drawing. She completed
a Diploma: Ingenieur grad. in Fashion/
Textil-design at Fachhochschule
Niederrhein, Germany in 1976, and
worked for 20 years as a designer.
She migrated to Australia in 2009, and
has since exhibited at Sculpture in
the Bay 2014 and 2015, Dunsborough;
Castaways Sculpture Awards 2014,
Rockingham; and the solo exhibition
INHOUSE at Vancouver Art Centre,
Albany in 2013. In 2014, she won the
South’s Furniture Emerging Artist Award
in the South West Survey, and was
offered a solo exhibition, which took
place at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery in
2015, entitled CLAY.
69
Anne Grotian’s work begins with an interest in
form, exploring ways of expressing this form
through objects. Drawing is the basis of all of her
practice, whether realised through clay sculpture,
installation or on paper. In Shades of Time, Grotian
begins with old rusted nails, called “dogs”, which
she finds half submerged in the ground near the
Great Southern Railway in Kendenup. Dog spikes
are used worldwide to secure and fasten rails in
a railway system. These objects hold and express
a depth of history within their form; they are the
evolutionary result of centuries of technological
refinement, directed at fulfilling a specific
function, but each bears the individualised marks
of the craftsman’s hand that shaped them. Grotian
explores these nails through drawings and rusting
on paper, celebrating each as a unique object
that expresses its form in monochromatic shades.
By doing so, she exceeds the narrow utilitarian
construction of the technical object, instead
understanding it as constituting a network of
relations.
 70
Roslyn
Hamdorf
Roslyn Hamdorf is a landscape painter
whose work concentrates on the
connections between sea, sky, rocks
and sand. She has been painting full
time for the past three years, and is
drawn to examine the unique geology
of her environment. Her work has been
shown as part of the Margaret River
Region Open Studios, at Bush House in
Quedjinup, and she was a finalist in the
City of Busselton Art Award at ArtGeo
Cultural Complex in 2017.
Born Perth, Western Australia; lives and works in Quindalup.
Roslyn Hamdorf begins each of her paintings in
the form of a traditional landscape, representing
the diverse landscapes around her home near
Margaret River. She then adds further layers to
the work, obscuring parts of the main image, to
create a landscape that gives the impression of
boulders and rock formations, or grains of sand.
Canal Rocks in Winter, as the title suggests, began
as a view of Canal Rocks in Yallingup. This is a
striking and unusual section of the coastline, and
one that Roslyn Hamdorf has painted many times.
Despite not being immediately recognisable as
this landscape, the painting still gives a sense of
location through its material qualities.
This return to geology in Hamdorf’s work gives a
sense of deep time, placing human identity on a
geological timescale, alongside rocks that have
been churned by erosion, sedimentation and
ocean flows. It marks a shift from art that merely
represents the landscape, to working directly in
and with landscape.
 71

Roslyn Hamdorf, Canal rocks in winter, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 2100 x 910mm
 72

Sam Born London, United Kingdom; lives and works in Balingup.

Harris

Sam Harris, Neighbours 1-3, 2017, archival digital prints, 400 x 500mm each

Sam Harris’ 2015 photobook The Middle
of Somewhere received the highly
prestigious American Lucie Award 2015,
as well as Australian Photobook of the
Year 2015 People’s Choice Award and
the AIPP Book of the Year 2016. His
previous photobook Postcards from
Home received the inaugural Australian
Photobook of the Year 2011, as well as
the Australian publishing industries Galley
Club ‘Book of the Year’ and ‘Australian
Book of the Year’ 2012. Harris’ work
has been exhibited in U.S.A., U.K., Italy,
Portugal, India, Russia and Australia and
resides in public and private collections.
When not photographing, he lectures in
photography and runs workshops. He has
20,000 followers on Instagram.
samharrisphoto.com
73
Originally from London, Sam Harris began his
career more than 25 years ago shooting record
covers and portraits for numerous music acts
such as Victoria Beckham, Jamiroqui, UB40,
John Lydon, Blur, Portishead, Jarvis Cocker and
Ronan Keating. He also regularly shot portraits
and features for leading UK publications The
Sunday Times Magazine, Esquire, Telegraph
Magazine, Dazed & Confused, GQ and worked
on assignments around the world. Since settling
in Balingup, Harris has come to focus on
documenting his own life and surroundings, most
recently compiling these into the photobooks
Postcards from Home and The Middle of
Somewhere, which capture intimate moments of
domestic life with warmth and candour. Harris’s
photographs in South West Art Now are from the
early stages of his new long-term project titled
Neighbours. The photographs record the daily
activity of his friends and community, forming
both a diary and an inquiry into the values and
lifestyle of a group of friends in small rural town
with a unique and creative spirit at its heart.
 74

Catherine Born Kalgoorlie, Western Australia; lives and works in Australind.

Higham
Catherine Higham focuses on the relationship
between human behaviour and ecology in her
artwork. A passionate advocate for regional
Australia, her experiences of working as an
artist and farmer for over twenty years form the
inspiration for this work. Using found objects,
site-specific installation and digital media,
Higham attempts to open dialogue about land
use between positions of often polarised values.
In her recent work, she has investigated the
presence and transmission of codes, examining
the use of colour in meteorological temperature
maps and maritime flags. Having recently moved
from her farm in Williams to a coastal environment,
Higham has had an increasing focus on maritime
signals, and the system of flags and associated
codes used to communicate with ships across
the Southern Ocean. Her work Drift explores
language and meaning, seeking to identify
patterns and disruption within sequences of
symbols.

Catherine Higham has a cross

disciplinary approach that includes
painting, assemblage, sculpture and
digital media. Higham exhibits nationally
and internationally and has held five
solo exhibitions, including Cumulous
Evidence, Bunbury Regional Art Gallery,
2013; Prime Mover, The Moores Building
Contemporary Art Gallery, 2011; and
Presence, Fremantle Arts Centre, 2007.
She has an interest in art and science
collaborations and was a recipient
of SymbioticA’s site based project
Adaptation based at Lake Clifton.
Recent studies include a Bachelor of
Contemporary Art (Honours) at the
University of Tasmania (2015).

catherinehigham.com.au Catherine Higham, Drift (detail), 2017, giclee, archival inks, dimensions variable.
Image courtesy the artist.
75
 76

Sharon Born Kalgoorlie, Western Australia; lives and works in Australind.

Hinchliffe
Sharon Hinchcliffe, At the Peril (detail), 2018, acrylic and ink on canvas, 610 x 1220mm
 77
Sharon Hinchcliffe works in acrylic, Sharon Hinchliffe’s works are often the trigger
ink, graphite, watercolour and collage. for stories to develop and flourish. Beginning
Strongly influenced by the ocean and
nature, her designs often take on the
with fluid painted strokes, she builds up forms
form of waves, imagined landscapes and through intricate line work and detailing,
familiar creatures. She has exhibited in creating imaginary landscapes and populated
various group exhibitions in Western
Australia and interstate, including the
with strangely familiar creatures. The sea has
2013 and 2014 South West Surveys always had a strong influence on Hinchcliffe,
at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery and and proximity to the ocean was an important
2016 South West Art Now. Her work has factor in her move to the South West. This
been recognised through a Dardanup
Arts Spectacular People Choice affinity is expressed in her work through the
Award, and Boyup Brook Art Award. Her recurrence of waves, boats and aquatic birds as
collaborative exhibition with ceramic subject matter. In her work for South West Art
artist Tracie Anderson, Salt: The Blue
Series, was shown at Bunbury Regional Now, Hinchliffe reprises these themes, though
Art Gallery in 2018. with a looseness in style that allows space for
randomness and unexpected figures to emerge
arlidesign.com.au
from her initial application of paint. The works
encourage the viewer to explore their own
relationships – with each other, themselves and
the world around them.

Sharon Hinchcliffe, At the Peril (work in progress), 2018, acrylic and ink on canvas, 610 x 1220mm
 78
Patricia
Hines
Patricia Hines worked as a fabric
designer for the first twenty years of
her career, and her love of design and
pattern informs recent work in ceramics.
Exhibitions include the 2017 Ceramic Arts
Association of Western Australia Selective
Exhibition; Site Lines at CASM Mandurah
2016; and PRINTPRESSPAINT at emerge
ART SPACE in 2014. Her work is held in
the Janet Holmes a Court Collection, The
John Hughes Collection, Department
of Veterans Affairs, Presbyterian Ladies
College and Busselton Regional Hospital,
amongst others.
www.patriciahines.com
Born 1950, Perth, Western Australia; lives and works in
Dwellingup.
From her Dwellingup studio in the heart of
the northern Jarrah forest, Patricia Hines has
daily contact with birds, and her abiding and
instinctual love of the natural environment
continues to inform her arts practice. Her recent
work explores ceramics, experimenting with
surfaces such as timber and Perspex, which
reflect her love of print and mark making, and
developing and experimenting with ash glazes
made from Jarrah, Marri, Kingia australis and Oak.
Her works in South West Art Now are reflective
of her love of birds, and concern with the high
extinction rate of Australian birds. Beach Bird
is made up of flotsam and jetsam collected by
a friend over a span of 30 years. All of these
items may have been in the ocean for up to
100 years and have a tough outer layer of salt
from travelling with the tide. Both this work and
the nest in Eggs and Nest are twined together
using Glory Vine tendrils, while the eggs are
made from bisque fired paper clay. Vanished
Birds also uses ceramics in its construction,
though the artist has also used asbestos in the
construction of one specimen. The use of this
unusual material brings an edge of danger to
the work, entreating the audience to not dismiss
the work, but to consider the actions that are
lethal to our environment.
 79
Patricia Hines, Eggs and Nest, 2017,
bisque fired paper clay, flotsam: glass, brick, stone,
coal and calcified limestone, glory vine tendrils, string,
dimensions variable. Image courtesy the artist.

Patricia Hines, The

Vanished Birds, 2017,
ceramic, asbestos,
calcified limestone, bone
flotsam, steel, Jarrah and
Perspex, under glazes, slip,
grout & steel, 380 x 200 x
320mm. Images courtesy
the artist.

Patricia Hines, The Vanished Birds, 2017,

ceramic, asbestos, calcified limestone, bone flotsam,
steel, Jarrah and Perspex, under glazes, slip, grout &
steel, 380 x 200 x 320mm. Images courtesy the artist.
 80

Cassandra Born 1988, Bunbury, Western Australia;

lives and works in Bunbury.

Jetta

Cassandra Jetta,
Milkar Win, Wiriny Worlak
Yidjowiny (Transforming
Spirit), 2017, acrylic on
canvas, 1010 x 765mm
 81

Having always had a talent for creativity and

drawing, Cassandra Jetta began painting three
years ago, spurred by a significant cultural
moment in Australian and Indigenous history.
In 2015, Australian Rules Footballer Lewis Jetta
celebrated a goal with a war dance, in response
to ongoing racially-motivated booing of team-
mate Adam Goodes. Jetta was inspired to create
a painting of this moment, and was gratified by
the strong response to her portrait by peers
and the wider community. She has subsequently
created a body of work that highlights moments
of strength of Noongar people. The three
paintings that are exhibited in South West Art
Now form part of this body of work, and include
a portrait of Jetta’s father who is a loving and
strong figure in his community in spite of past
trauma as a member of the stolen generation, as
well as a more traditional portrait of a Noongar
mother, draped in the skin of a kangaroo. Jetta
incorporates traditional lines and patterning into
her work, working intuitively to draw out shapes
and colours that give power to her portraits.
Wardandi Noongar artist Cassandra
Jetta paints portraits that recognise and
celebrate Australian Indigenous culture.
Beginning her career in 2015, she has
exhibited three times in the Noongar
Country exhibition at Bunbury Regional
Art Gallery, receiving the best overall
award in 2016, and emerging artist prize
in 2017. She was commissioned by the
Yaka Dandjoo Events Committee in 2017
to design their logo, and was previously
commissioned to create a triptych wall
mural for the Newton Moore Senior High
School modelling group. Her first public
art commission, for City of Bunbury,
was completed in 2018 and installed at
Koombana Bay Kiosk.
 82

Sue Kalab Born Fremantle, Western Australia;

lives and works in Bunbury.

Sue Kalab’s Prince of Tuarts – Ancestor Tree is

a watercolour of a tree in South Bunbury, along
Parade Road, which is scheduled to be bulldozed
for housing development. Current federal and
state laws give easy approval to destruction of
trees such as this, and many have been toppled for
roadworks and construction. Kalab is concerned
that legislation be overhauled to protect the
giant Tuarts, which are only found along the
slender coastal limestone strip of Western
Australia. Already only a small percentage remain,
threatened by land clearance, loss of underground
water, inappropriate burning practices, continuing
droughts and changes to climate. Her work shows
this tree as an “ancestor tree”, home to a vast
array of species, with irreplaceable DNA. While
the actual tree is robust and healthy, Kalab has
painted it as ephemeral, urging us to consider the
great travesty of it disappearing into nothingness.

Sue Kalab is a watercolour painter

whose work is intimately linked to her
environmental activism. She worked as an
artist for twelve years, between 1981 and
1993 in a mudbrick cottage in Mallacoota
a fishing village in Croajingolong National
Park, Victoria, working alongside parks
rangers, and native orchid and bird
experts. She has worked as an art
therapist at Graylands Hospital, Perth,
art consultant in Pilbara Aboriginal
communities, an and a sessional art
lecturer at Edith Cowan University, South
West. Her 24th solo exhibition will be at
Collie Art Gallery in July 2018.

www.suekalab.com
 83

Sue Kalab, Prince of Tuarts - Ancestor Tree (detail), 2017,

watercolour, 750 x 550mm. Image courtesy the artist.
 84

Anastasija Born Bregenz, Austria; lives and works in Bunbury.

Komarnyckyj

Anastasija Komarnyckyj,
Cascading Light, 2017,
oil on canvas, 1520 x 1060mm

Anastasija Komarnyckyj completed a
Bachelor of Arts in Creative Industries,
with a Visual Arts Major at Edith Cowan
University, South West in 2008, gaining
the prize for Academic Excellence. Her
work investigates identity and culture,
responding to the natural environment.
She has participated in numerous group
exhibitions throughout Western Australia
and interstate. Since 2009, she has held
an annual solo exhibition, and opened
AK Studio Gallery, Bunbury. Komarnyckyj
facilitates art classes from her studio
and has worked as an arts tutor within
the community for Bunbury Regional Art
Gallery, DADAA, Art Partners and the
Stirling Street Arts Centre.
www.komarnyckyj.com
85
After migration to Western Australia with my
parents from Europe post WWII, Anastasija
Komarnyckyj’s life was spent in both rural and
bush settings. As a result, her formative years were
indelibly characterised by a strong connection
with the natural environment: the bush became her
explorative playground.
Komarnyckyj’s arts practice contains emotive
reference, exploring the physicality of various
media and the regeneration of life in pre-used
materials. Her work Cascading Light focuses on
the pneumatophores or aerial roots of an ancient
mangrove colony, circa 2,500 years of age, which
fringe the mudflats of the Leschenault Inlet. These
humble structures assist in the respiratory process,
maintaining the health of the mangrove plants. The
regular irregularity of the root structure, its clumping
repetitive growth habit, its necessity for plant
survival and, its tenacity for existence are intriguing
to the artist, who over time has observed the
shades, shapes, and shadows of pneumatophores
transforming aspects of the Inlet waterway into areas
of intimate beauty.
 86
Sue
Leeming
Sue Leeming attended Elam School
of Fine Art at The University of
Auckland, graduating with a Bachelor
of Fine Arts and Post-Graduate
Diploma in Fine Art in 1995. Her
current practice is primarily based
around painting and drawing
mediums including oils, inks, acrylics,
and extends ideas of abstraction,
landscape, identity and spirituality.
Group exhibitions include 89 Days,
Kidogo Art House, at the Fenians
Fremantle and Freedom Festival,
2018; Scene 2017 at Nyisztor Gallery,
Melville; 2017 City of Busselton
Art Award; and The Waterways
and Wetlands Art Exhibition at the
University of Western Australia in
2010, where she was the winner of the
People’s Choice Award.
sueleeming.com
Born 1968, New Plymouth, New Zealand;
lives and works in Byford.
Sue Leeming’s practice is primarily based around
painting and drawing mediums including oils,
inks, acrylics, and extends ideas of abstraction,
landscape, identity and spirituality. She
experiments with the physicality of paint and
process in her work, allowing the imagery to
spring from process. She is interested in plasticity
and psychological responses to both cultural and
physical environments.
Leeming migrated to Australia from New Zealand
in 1998, and living in the Peel region has had a
significant effect on her sense of place and
belonging. This displacement triggered a
curiosity to understand how and why the local
landscape influences her, particularly in her
everyday, and how that resonates with the
‘places’ that inhabit her mind.
The works in South West Art Now represent
landscape as a material condition that both
shapes and is shaped by psychic subjectivities.
Leeming develops a means of articulation
and system of signification expressive of
her unease at the contradiction between
her environment and her identity. Her work
describes a relationship to place refracted
through structures of belonging like personal
customs, historical ephemera and recognition
of her Maori, English and Scottish heritage.
 87

Sue Leeming, A Resurrected Past (detail), 2018,

Oil, ink and gesso on marine ply ink; gesso, graphite on Hahenemuhle, 1000 x 1000mm
 88

Peter Little Born Perth, Western Australia; lives and works in Margaret River.

Peter Little, on the brink (work in progress), 2017, watercolour and pen, 1100 x 1600mm

Peter Little is a self-trained watercolour
artist, whose interest in painting and
drawing has been sustained throughout
careers as an architect, academic and
researcher, as a pioneer of solar housing
in Western Australia, and a certified
organic farmer in the South West. He has
shown work in Tree Species Exhibition at
Treeton Fine Wood Studio, Cowaramup in
2015; South West Survey 2013 at Bunbury
Regional Art Gallery; and at Print Gallery,
Margaret River in 2012. His solo exhibition
was at Hay Shed Hill, Margaret River in
2012, where he has also exhibited with his
son, Guy Little, in 2014-15.
www.peterlittle.com
89
Peter Little’s work explores ways art and
science can collaborate in telling stories of the
environment. His work has evolved from traditional
landscapes and streetscapes, to studies of the
iconic Australian gum leaf in its process of decay
and journey to living organic matter on the forest
floor. His later work adopts a quirky whimsical
style, to explore the role of narrative in painting.
on the brink attempts to show both the plight
of the Black Gloved Wallaby, whose long term
existence is threatened by fragmentation of habitat,
as well as current work being carried out by the
Ranges Link project to create continuous wildlife
habitat between the Porongorup and Stirling
Ranges. This painting embodies the challenge
of fitting the story of a scientific, environmental
project into a framework that has the power to
provoke curiosity, understanding and concern.
The artist is indebted to Peter and Susie
Luscombe, for sharing their knowledge, showing
him around their rehabilitation projects and for
challenging his many assumptions regarding the
natural environment. This work would not have
been possible without their breadth of knowledge
and experience.
 90
Elisa
Markes-
Young
“Sometimes I think we all have embedded in the
brain a personal space like a home we’ve lost
that lingers in our skulls (...) This place and (the)
people - they’re like elements or primary colours,
forming and haunting our lives. (...) (T)he original
place isn’t ideal, just primary, saturating your child
sensibility like the first exposure of film; if that
place is then lost it settles in the brain rare and
fantastic.”
- Jane Allison
Born 1964, Gorlice, Poland; lives and works in Margaret River.
Drawing on her childhood memories of a festive
Poland, Markes-Young creates works of nostalgic
celebration. She aims to create something that to
her feels like the place she remembers. The shapes
and patterns she creates reference traditions and
rituals known to her since childhood and are still
very much part of her life. The work conveys what
she wants to say about memory and recollections.
Indeed its fragility - the paper elements, delicate
paper cuts and chains, the lace, sugar and wafers
- reinforce its conceptual value.
The Original Place is a result of homesickness
and a profound feeling of displacement and loss,
however it is not about anguish. It’s about the
nostalgia of childhood memories and how they
colour the way you look at things throughout
your life.
Elisa Markes-Young was born in Poland,
and moved to Germany with her family in
1981. Since moving to Western Australia
in 2002, she has exhibited regularly,
including at Nyisztor Studio, Heathcote
Museum & Gallery, Artspace Mackay,
Central Institute of Technology, Kurb
Gallery, at the Joondalup Invitational Art
Award, and the 1st Fibre Textile Triennial.
Her work is held in various collections
including City of Bunbury, City of Greater
Geraldton, City of Joondalup, Royal Perth
Hospital, Tamworth Regional Gallery, and
Wangaratta Art Gallery.
www.zebra-factory.com/emy
 91
Elisa Markes-Young,
The Original Place 2/2018 (work in progress),
paper, fondant, wafers, textiles, 1500 x 1500mm
(Photo by Elisa Markes-Young)
 92

Barbara Born Perth, Western Australia; lives and works in Palgarup.

Maumill

Barbara Maumill’s landscape paintings eschew

the typical forest and sea-scapes of the South
Wet, chosing instead to focus on the suburban
streets that are our daily milieu. Her treatment
of these vistas is anything but prosaic, with soft
saturated colours and high contrast detailing
creating a vivid and dreamlike atmosphere.
These are not paintings of any existing
landscapes, but instead are generated from an
amalgamation of familiar features, drawn from
Maumill’s own experiences and imagination. The
result is an uncanny sensation that we have seen
this place before, though one cannot identify
exactly where or when. Her painting Garden
Gate is an early morning view of Manjimup in
spring, with a backlit wooden garden gate. The
artist captures the soft early-morning light and
banded striations of shadows passing through
the fence and gate. The wandering shadows
and branches lead the eye across the paintings,
promising a perspectival depth which cannot
be reached. Maumill’s imaginative works also
extend to subject matter including birds and
the human figure. Yellow Robin depicts the
birds which bathe in the bird bath in Maumill’s
garden, shown in a nest surrounded by a mass
of raspberry pink eucalyptus flowers.
 93

Barbara Maumill studied art at

Claremont Technical School in the early
1980s, where she gained a Diploma
of Fine Art, specialising in painting.
She exhibited until the 1990s at Joan
Rigby’s Young Originals gallery in
Cottesloe and Nedlands, and then took
a hiatus from painting until 2011. She
has exhibited in the South West Survey
at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, 2014;
the Pemberton Unearthed Exhibition
in 2015 and 2016; the 2015 City of
Busselton Art Award; and at Painted
Tree Gallery, Northcliffe in 2014, 2015
and 2016. In 2013, she won First Prize
in the Nannup Art Prize.

Barbara Maumill, Garden Gate (detail), 2017, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100mm
 94
Sarah
McBride
Sarah McBride works primarily in oil
on canvas, with a focus on portraiture.
Her group exhibitions include Art
Extraordinaire, 2016 and 2017; Winners
of Dardanup Art Spectacular 2017, at
Collie Art Gallery; Stirling Street Art
Centre Christmas Fair 2016; and she
exhibits regularly with Australind Art
Club. In 2016, she won the people’s
choice award at the Brunswick Show
and the Bunbury Show. McBride also
works as a tutor at Stirling Street Art
Centre, and has been a mentor with
Art Partners, Bunbury. Her first solo
exhibition will be at Bunbury Regional
Art Gallery in October 2018.
www.sarahmcbrideart.com
Born 1966, England; lives and works in Bunbury.
Sarah McBride’s latest series of artworks
incorporate classic genres, using animals as their
main subject in a surreal narrative to highlight
environmental and contemporary issues. The
works reference the complex stories told by the
works of the old masters and Pre-Raphaelites,
drawing on McBride’s previous career as an
environmental journalist by incorporating the
issues of sustainability and inequality that are
close to her heart.
Each of McBride’s works in South West Art Now
is inspired by a classic painting: The Bird with the
Pearl Hook is based on the Girl with the Pearl
Earring by Johannes Vermeer. It highlights our
disregard for wildlife, leaving detritus without
a thought of the consequences. Less-home is
inspired by the cityscapes of Edward Hopper,
and highlights the diminishing habitat of native
animals. The city scape is from Bunbury and
the two shops indicate two opposing views. A
solitary Dingo crosses the hot tarmac, his tail
between his legs indicative of his vunerability.
 95

Sarah McBride, The Bird with the Pearl Hook, 2017, oil on canvas, 45 x 355mm

Sarah McBride, Less-Home, 2017, Oil on Canvas, 610 x 915mm

 96

Serena Born Perth, Western Australia; lives and works in Albany.

McLauchlan

Serena McLauchlan explores painting, light,

Serena McLauchlan, Trophy, 2017, mylar space blankets, tape,
2500 x 4000mm. Image courtest the artist.
matter, and the visual sensation of crystallising
colour in monochromatic expanses to
reinvigorate ordinary sensory experiences. Her
encaustic wax works exploit the sensual and
the tactile. She also works site-specifically with
colour, formal concerns and in her more recent
temporary installations, paste-ups and ‘woven
light’ pieces to push the boundaries of painting
as an extended medium.
Jewel uses holographic tape to intervene in
the space of Bunbury Regional Art Gallery’s
Chapel Gallery. Known as ‘scare tape’ these
shimmering strips are usually used as a humane
way of deterring birds from lawns and gardens.
The holographic surface confuses the eye,
its colours hovering on the edge of visual
perception and creating a depth of space that
belies its flat planes. These reflective surfaces
generate imagery as an analogue of the picture
plane, foregrounding the work’s engagement
with the concerns of painting.
 97

Serena McLauchlan seeks to explore

painting, light, matter and the visual
sensation of crystallising colour in
monochromatic expanses, which
reinvigorates the relevance of
ordinary sensory experiences. Recent
temporary installations, paste-ups
and ‘woven light’ pieces work site-
specifically with colour, context and
a painterly aesthetic. McLauchlan
graduated from Edith Cowan
University in 2000 after completing a
BA Visual Arts Honours degree which
included a six month study exchange
at the Amsterdam School of Arts, The
Netherlands in 1999.

www.hotchingallery.com.au
 98

Lesley Born 1945, England; lives and works in Yallingup and Perth.

Meaney
Lesley Meaney’s practice is predominantly driven by a deep
appreciation and respect for the Australian landscape, particularly
the intricate detail and pattern found in nature. Much of her work
shares a common theme of travelling, hunting, and experimentation,
of understanding different cultures, looking back and looking
forward. Her series of works The Studio Nude, The Naked Model
have a connection with these ideas through their use of the
recycled wooden case. Cases, bags and chests of all kinds can
be understood as signifiers of mobility, displacement and duality.
Luggage can mark the end of a journey, or symbolise a historical
moment of rupture, after which familiarity is lost. Meaney’s cases
are the canvas on which she has realised a series of life drawings.

Lesley Meaney, The Studio Nude,
The Naked Model, #1, 2017,
mixed media inside and outside recycled
wooden cases, 32cmHx74cmWx63cmD
Meaney writes:
“Life drawing was part of my art training in London
over 50 years ago. Since then, I have intermittently
returned to drawing the undraped model, when I
feel the need to sharpen my observational skills,
or speed up my decision making.”
Life drawing represents an aspect of her practice
where she can lose herself in the pleasure of
making. Like the case, it has an association with
movement, memory and of learning new things.
It is also a way of reasserting the personal
and intimate, entangling the artist in a web of
connectedness. Meaney’s work demonstrates her
ability to maintain a presence in several cultures
and historical moments simultaneously. Her
practice is heterogenous, crossing boundaries of
place, medium and time.
99
Lesley Meaney completed her four year,
traditional, predominately skills-based
art training in London in 1966. On
completion of a post-graduate Teachers
Diploma at Liverpool University, she
arrived in Western Australia in 1969 to
take up a position as a specialist Art
Teacher. She later held senior lecturing
positions in WA, including teaching
Indigenous artists based at Cossack. In
2009 she was the Artist in Residence
at the Holmes a Court Gallery in East
Perth. Her 26 solo exhibitions have taken
on different areas of enquiry, revealing
an expansive practice and a constantly-
shifting focus, between abstraction
and representation, to create both
two-dimensional and three-dimensional
works.
www.lesleymeaney.com.au
 100
Sarah Mills
Sarah Mills writes: “As a South West practitioner,
I feel it’s extremely important to remember place
and space, and to respect the history of this
place throughout all aspects of time.”
Her work speaks about humanity and the
environmental condition, and contains an
underlying theme about the relationship, and
disconnect, between Indigenous and European
Australia; the native and the colonised. It considers
the effects of colonisation, genocide, where we
are in the present, and how colonisation has
affected our environment. Mills aims to contribute
to bridging the gap between the two cultures
and to incite awareness of the environmental
degradation this segregation has caused and is
continuing to cause.
Born 1991, Bunbury, Western Australia;
lives and works in Bunbury.
Sarah Mills is a multi-disciplinary artist
who graduated from Edith Cowan
University with first-class Honours in
visual art. She has shown work locally,
state-wide and in NSW, and has featured
in international prizes. Her work was
recently promoted in Taipei, China as
part of the Perth-Taiwan Curatorial
Exchange Program. Mills was invited
to paint a public mural for Re.Discover
Bunbury 2016, has works published
in the Womankind Magazine, was the
winner of the 2017 Mid-West Art Prize,
and was a part of the Spaces Between
Us collaborative exhibition and research
project. Mills also lectures in the Bachelor
of Arts degree at Edith Cowan University,
South West. Her work is held in the Edith
Cowan University and City of Geraldton
Art Collections. Her forthcoming solo
exhibition will be at Bunbury Regional Art
Gallery in 2018.
Using deceased and living wildlife, and parts of,
collected and photographed in the South West,
Mother’s Bones is a metaphorical exploration
questioning how European intervention, which is
said to have done wonders for Australia with all
its knowledge and technological advancements,
has actually caused cultural and environmental
degradation and a threatened ecosystem which we
are currently seeing at present in this region. For
example, the number of possums in particular dying
on our roads is peaking and the species is expected
to be extinct within 20 years. How can 200 years
of European existence outweigh 80,000+ years of
traditional knowledge and practices?
 101

Sarah Mills, Mother’s Bones, 2017, photograph, 40” x 47”. Image courtesy the artist.
 102

Peter Moir Born 1949, Edinburgh, Scotland;

lives and works in Margaret River.

Peter Moir, Twin Falls - King George River, Kimberley WA, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 1820 x 1220mm
 103

Peter Moir has been working as an artist

since 2003 and full time since 2007. His
work spans many mediums from bronze,
steel and stainless steel sculptures to oil,
acrylic, watercolour, charcoal, pastel and
mixed media paintings and drawings. He
has exhibited throughout the state, and
in 2009, won the Dale Alcock Homes
Acquisitive Award and the People’s
Choice award at the Bunbury Regional
Art Gallery South West Survey. He was
Highly Commended at the 2010 Cossack
Art Awards and Vasse Art Awards, and
was awarded an artist in residency for
the 2011 Cossack Art Awards by the
Shire of Roebourne.

www.petermoir.com

Peter Moir is inspired by the ever-changing South West beach

scapes and forests surrounding his Margaret River home, and by
the vibrant colours and stark, rugged beauty of the North West.
Many of the landscapes are a result of his regular camping trips,
depicting the vibrant colours and ancient textures of the Kimberley
and Pilbara. His beach and dune paintings attempt to capture the
light, shade and wind which sculpt and form the dunes and shore.
It is important to him to accurately depict the living ecology of the
beach, which is dynamic and fragile – the colonising plants, such
as sedges and grasses; and in more sheltered niches, the shrubby
plants. Locations range the entire Western Australian coast, from
Cape Leveque to Rottnest to Esperance, each place having its
unique colours and geology.
 104

Paul Born 1947, Perth, Western Australia;

lives and works in Kentdale.

Moncrieff

Paul Moncrieff, Paint System PM, 2017,

acrylic paint on plywood; together with
glass jars timber, metal hooks, transfer
vinyl lettering, 1280 x 1400 x 200 mm.
(Photo by Bo Wong)
 105
Paul Moncrieff’s studio work evolves directly
from observed and experienced incidents, which
metamorphose in the studio into designed and
made art objects. He has exhibited since 1978
in Perth, regional Western Australia, and the
Eastern States. He has had twenty solo, three
shared, and many group exhibitions. His paintings,
drawings and prints are part of a considerable
number of major public and private Australian art Paint System PM was initially inspired by
collections. Moncrieff’s work was selected by the
Commonwealth Government Australian Office of
Moncrieff’s habit of keeping the paddles he
the Arts for their 2011 promotional E Xmas card. uses to stir pre-mixed acrylic paint colours
Until 2007, he was the coordinator of the Painting in his studio, hanging on the wall with their
and Drawing programme at Edith Cowan University,
kaleidoscopic coatings. In this work he has
Mount Lawley.
made an enlarged version of these paddles,
paulmoncrieff.com accompanied by jar samples for each colour,
and the name of the colour written in script on
the rear wall. Moncrieff writes:
“Paint manufacturers name all their colours, an
Paul Moncrieff’s more recent practice is
evocative attempt to reach out to the consumer
nonfigurative: formal juxtapositions of shaped
through the medium of the word. These colour
and painted industrial surfaces. This work
names change over time as fashions come
explores repetition and pattern through
and go. I have always found them to be gently
geometric configurations that rely on simple
amusing and meaningless at the same time.”
arrangements of basic colours and forms
according to a methodical system. The decisions The work is part of Moncrieff’s continuing
he makes in this work are not arbitrary, but investigation in his broader body of work,
respond to his environment, balancing internal exploring the question of what painting is or
and external space, and connections between can be.
paint, volume and shape.
 106

Deanna Born 1986, Bunbury, Western Australia; lives and works in Bunbury.

Mosca

Deanna Mosca paints portraits in acrylics

and oils on raw canvas and linen. These works
often express a deep sadness and darkness of
emotion, growing out of tragedy in her personal
life. Mosca deconstructs the ground of her
paintings by pulling threads loose along the
warp of the canvas to creating spaces that echo
the emotional tone of emptiness and fragility.
This fragmentation also highlights the illusory
nature of the portraits, undermining the notion
of a constant sense of self and destabilising
any certainty on the part of the viewer. The
process of deconstructing the canvases is
deeply meditative, the result of many hours of
picking apart, which allows the artist to enter a Deanna Mosca works predominately
space where time becomes unimportant. in acrylics and oils on drawn canvas.
She also works with aerosols, creating
large scale murals around Bunbury
and internationally. Mosca studied a
Bachelor of Creative Industries at Edith
In all of her work, Mosca seeks to draw out commonalities Cowan University, graduating in 2006.
in the human experience across cultures and represent She has exhibited throughout Western
Australia, and her most recent solo
people from diverse backgrounds. Her work Particles is a exhibition, Stranded, was at Alternating
portrait of Indigenous model Samantha Harris. By drawing Current Art Space, Windsor, Victoria
attention to faces that are less often seen, Mosca questions in 2017. She continues to work in and
around the South West, on murals for
the underrepresentation of Indigenous figures in the media local governments, as an arts tutor
of our society. for community organisations, and
commissions for private collectors.
 107

Deanna Mosca, Particles, 2017, acrylics and oils on drawn canvas, 770x610x40
 108

Kim Born 1953, Edmonton, Canada; lives and works in Bridgetown.

Perrier
Kim Perrier has been extensively involved with
creating and exploring new technologies for
sculptural purposes and has developed seven
unique sculptural styles over the years. He has
worked with a diversity of material including,
bronze, cast lead, crystal glass, stone, wood,
plastics and precious metals. His current work is
with bark and charcoal, centred on the depiction of
the human form. Entitled Carbonature, this series
uses a carbon-based process to create human
bodies emerging from charred Jarrah logs, which
Perrier finds in the bush. The work celebrates
carbon as the element that is present in all life
on earth, highlighting the connection between all
living creatures. The sculptures evoke a sense of
the fantastique: the intrusion of unexplained and
inexplicable phenomena into an otherwise realist
narrative. Perrier writes:
“Artists are explorers of realms that lie between
the known and the yet unseen. I ask you to look
beyond what you think is there and explore deeper
for a fresh understanding.”

Kim Perrier has been practicing sculpture

for forty years, working with a diversity of
materials. His work is represented in the
collections of the Art Gallery of Western
Australia, Gallery of the Northern
Territory, The National Gallery, Canberra
and the National Mapping Library.
Perrier has exhibited in New York and
across Europe, and has been included in
international Australian jewellery design
tours to Southeast Asia and Japan, and
a major exhibition of contemporary and
historical Australian jewellery to Europe.
His work Ashes to Ashes won the WA
Sculptor Scholarship award in 2015 at
Sculptures by the Sea, Cottesloe and
the People’s Choice Award at the 2015
Sculptures by the Sea, Bondi.
 109

Kim Perrier, Carbonature Series 2017 #2, 2017, Kim Perrier, Carbonature Series 2017 #3, 2017,
jarrah, charcoal, galvanised steel, granite, 2700 x 700 x 500mm. jarrah, charcoal, galvanised steel, granite, 2700 x 700 x 500mm.
(Photo by Kim Perrier) (Photo by Kim Perrier)
 110

Geraldine Born New Zealand; lives and works in Bunbury.

Peterkin

Geraldine Peterkin, Karijini 1-3, 2017, fibre, 180 x 450 x 450mm

 111

Geraldine Peterkin works in contemporary hand

and machine embroidery, describing textures and
shapes with fibre and thread. In recent years, she
has developed a technique of making bowls, by
creating cords with fabric, threads and anything
else at her disposal, and then using a sewing
machine to coil these cords into a bowl shape.
She then works the overlaying collage of colours,
shapes and motifs onto the bowl, developing
each one intuitively, with reference to personal
and spiritual encounters with a given location.
The bowls exhibited in South West Art Now are
inspired by a recent trip to Karijini National Park in
the Pilbarra Region of Western Australia. In these
works, she works in layers, building up textures
and colours to replicate the rocks, sediments and
organic matter found in the gorges and plains of
the park. Peterkin’s work evidences a passion for
the techniques of fibre textile as a contemporary
art form, pushing each technique she uses to the
limits of its possibilities.

Geraldine Peterkin studied at St Martin’s

School of Art in London in the 1960s
and attended the Fine Art Summer
Academy seasons in Salzburg, Austria
studying under Oskar Kokoschka. She
later completed postgraduate studies
at the Western Australian Institute of
Technology. Her work is held in the
Collection of the Embroiderers Guild of
Western Australia, as well as local, state
and international collections. She exhibits
regularly alongside Neville Peterkin at
Lyndendale Gallery, Dardanup.
 112

Laurie Born 1959, Southern Cross, Western Australia;

lives and works in Margaret River.

Posa

Laurie Posa has a love of the absurd,

which is expressed through his narrative
paintings. His work is held in various
public and private collections, including
the City of Bunbury, Shire of Busselton
and Lavan Legal collections. He has
shown work at the Bunbury Regional
Art Gallery South West Survey, 2005-
2012, and was the winner of the City of
Bunbury Art Acquisition Award 2012 and
joint winner of the Signature Southwest
Art Prize 2009.Other group exhibitions
include Stations of the Cross Exhibition,
Wesley Uniting Church, Perth in 2012 and
the Paul Rigby Art Prize in 2005.

laurieposa.com

Laurie Posa, Resurrection, 2017, oil on board, 1200 x 670mm
Laurie Posa paints precisely delineated rural
and industrial landscapes, working in a highly
finished and detailed style. He has a love of
the absurd, especially when it is combined with
irony and ambiguity. He is a keen observer of
society, and his works often form narrative
threads addressing environmental sustainability
or the human condition. His goal is to challenge
and provoke thought on the part of the viewer,
without being patronising or didactic.
113
His work Resurrection visualises the rise of
technology and the way in which it has shaped
our existence, from the pyramids through to the
industrial revolution. Where technologies have
fallen, others have risen from the debris, stronger
and more intelligent. Posa questions the role
humanity plays in this evolution of technology:
are we as a species just a disposable step in the
evolution of a cyber intelligence, or is it for the
greater good of humanity?
 114

Abbe Born Perth, Western Australia;

lives and works in Peppermint Grove Beach.

Reid

Abbe Reid paints landscapes focusing on the

shapes and colour reflecting a particular region.
Shown from an aerial perspective, these shapes
and colours represent urban density, delineating
the outlines of properties and land to emphasise
people’s obsession with ownership, and how
this impacts on the rural landscape. She uses
acrylic, oils and gold and silver leaf in her work,
incorporating processes of painting, scraping,
inserting mixed media and rubbing back to find
hidden elements within the works. She also uses
Google Maps to create aerial views, alongside
independent research into land use of coastal
areas. This research also explores colours
associated with natural and urban landscape,
and the changing seasons.
Urban Density Land & Sea represents her
interpretation of Geographe Bay and Peppermint
Grove Beach, showing the impending clutter
of urban density within an originally natural
environment. The painting extends down under
an ocean inhabited by both the familiar and
the unknown. Reid presents this as a place that
is resistant to urban encroachment: “You can’t
build under the sea”. Abbe Reid studied Visual Arts and Crafts,
majoring in printmaking, and graduated
from the Western Australian Academy of
Performing Arts, with a Bachelor of Arts,
majoring in Arts Management in 1991.
Her practice now focuses on painting in
oils and acrylic, scraping, inserting mixed
media and rubbing back to find hidden
elements within the works. She has had
solo exhibitions at Blank Space Gallery,
Sydney 2010 and Kidogo Art House,
Fremantle 2012. Group exhibitions include
South Perth Emerging Artist Award 2011,
Black Swan Heritage Prize 2013, City of
Busselton Art Award 2016.
 115

Abigail Reid, Urban Density Land & Sea (detail), 2017, oil on canvas, 1700 x 1200mm
 116

Amy Born Perth, Western Australia; lives and works in Busselton.

Rorke
 117

Amy Rorke, Blue Wren #1,

2018, watercolour, gouache,
pen, hand-embroidery, 21cm

Amy Rorke, Blue Wren #2,

2018, watercolour, gouache,
pen, hand-embroidery, 21cm

Amy Rorke, Scarlet Robin,

2018, watercolour, gouache,
pen, hand-embroidery, 21cm

Amy Rorke, Pardalote, 2018,

watercolour, gouache, pen,
hand-embroidery, 21cm

Images courtesy the artist.

Amy Rorke is a prolific maker, bringing an Amy Rourke has worked as a designer
since 1996, traveling the world
aesthetic sense developed through years extensively and working in London,
working as a designer to her great many Toronto, Ireland, New Zealand and Peru.
creative pursuits, from painting to embroidery While in Peru, she combined design work
with philanthropy, publishing a photo
to producing a range of products from her work book and raising $10,000 for community
as a beekeeper. After travelling and living in development. She is now a member
over seven countries in the past twelve years, of the Margaret River Artisan Store
collective, and is developing her painting
Rorke’s return to Western Australia brought with and fibre-textile-based art practice.
it opportunity to turn to a more contemplative
pace in her art. Her current location, while
isolated, is surrounded by bushland, giving her
ample opportunity to observe and appreciate
the native birds that flock to her garden. Amy’s
bold portraits capture the intimate moment of
encountering a bird at close quarters. Made from
gouache and watercolour on cotton, with hand-
embroidered details, each painting presents a
frank and open study of an individual creature.
 118

Elizabeth Born 1948, Albany, Western Australia;

lives and works in Bunbury.

Royce

Elizabeth Royce, Icefall, 2017, mixed media on paper, 1300 x 1000mm

 119

Elizabeth Royce is a painter and printmaker

whose work addresses themes of environment
and natural world in a style expressive of internal,
subjective experience. Her work Icefall shows a
waterfall frozen in time and space; it’s natural
fluidity and moving colours held in the vice of a
northern winter. Royce has broken down the lines
and shapes of the waterfall into geometrical and
directional simplicity. The detail and precision of
her strong line-work creates sinuous, irregular
pools of negative space in contrast to the icy
splinters of pale blue and slate formations.
The result is a cell-like surface that rejects any
directional or horizontal line, extending beyond
the boundaries of the paper. The work confuses
our notion of scale. Its organic, fractured
patterns alternately suggest a vast landscape
and microscopic detail. The very concept of
dimension is subverted and displaced.

Elizabeth Royce has a practice

incorporating painting (with both oils on
canvas, and gouache and watercolour
on paper) and printmaking, using simple
relief and intaglio methods. She has
exhibited extensively in the South West in
the past twenty-five years, including solo
exhibitions at Jalindia Gallery, Bunbury
in 1998 and Mundaring Art Centre in
1990. She has been a member of the
South West Printmakers since 2013, and
regularly takes part in group exhibitions
at Bunbury Regional Art Gallery. Royce
has a Bachelor of Education (Art Major)
from Edith Cowan University, Mount
Lawley, and has worked as an art
educator in schools for almost 40 years.

elizabethroyce.com
 120

James Born Bundjulung country, New South Wales;

lives and works in Collie.

Ryce

James Ryce hand-carves coolamons and

other tools from local woods, including
jarrah, sheoak and slender banksia. His
biological father was Indigenous and
Ryce was taught as a young child about
carving, bush foods and medicine by
a local elder, Old Man Roberts. After
moving to Collie several years ago,
Ryce sought and received traditional
permissions to use the bush for food,
medicine and other applications. The
volume of felled trees in the area inspired
him to begin carving again, after an
interval of some decades.

James Ryce makes traditional tools carved

from local woods, including Jarrah, Sheoak, and
Banksia Attenuata or slender banksia. These
tools include clubs, clapsticks, carved knives
with obsidian blades, and coolimons: the word
used by Indigenous Australians in Northern NSW
for a shallow vessel or dish with curved sides.
Ryce uses traditional carving methods, creating
objects that are both functional and beautiful.
He does not usually coat his carvings with any
varnish, other than oils or animal fat, enjoying
the natural contrasting colours of the cambium
layer under the bark and the deeper colours of
the inner wood. These objects are permeated
by the knowledge of many millennia, rooted in
many generations of continuing practice. Each
has multiple uses and is highly durable – lasting
centuries with little care.
 121

James Ryce, past works, 2017

 122

Helena Born Bundjulung country, New South Wales;

lives and works in Collie.

Sahm
Helena Sahm’s work investigates concepts within Her work in South West Art Now explores
a broad theme of ‘Living Here Not There’. This the metaphysics of buildings and the human.
stems from her move from Sydney to the relative Constructed environments influence our
isolation and sheltered life of South West Western experiences and affect our responses. The actual
Australia. Her work uses the built environment to and the remembered or imagined play with our
explore themes of buildings and houses: where perceptions and alter the context in which we
they are, what they contain, the environment they might experience our surroundings. The buildings
are in, what they symbolise, their condition and and constructions in her work are conceptual,
how we respond to them. realist and deconstructed representing our own
shelter, the buildings from broader cultures and
what may be destroyed by external forces or
reconstructed to remember or reinvent. She
expresses this through making works that connect
with a human presence, existing in a scale that
creates a physical relationship with the viewer.
Helena Sahm trained at NSW College
of Fine Art (Alexander Mackie CAE) and
East Sydney Technical College (National
Art School). She moved to Bunbury in
2002. She has worked as an art educator,
arts manager, gallery director and now a
full-time artist. Sahm has held positions
on the boards of arts organisations that
focus on regional arts practice, exhibitions
and projects. She is a multidisciplinary
artist often combining techniques and
media through constructed and applied
processes in both two-dimensional and
three-dimensional artworks.

helenasahm.com
 123

Helena Sahm, Binary Restructure (Architecture Review), 2017, timber, closed cell foam,
paper, cardboard, ink, graphite, paint, 2500 x 1500 x 400

Helena Sahm, Metaphysical Still Life with

Manufactured Rubble (details), 2017,
closed cell foam, paper, charcoal, paint,
plaster, acrylic panels, 500x594x1600
 124

Margaret Born 1957, Bunbury, Western Australia;

lives and works in Albany.

Sanders

Margaret Sanders makes linoprints and print
installation works, which feature found objects
and plant material. Her work explores the natural
and cultural histories of plants and landscapes,
with her floricultural inquiries responding to the
challenge of Georgiana Molloy’s words: “The
plants have no association, nor does anything
attract but their lustrous colour”.
Sandplain heath, near ephemeral water and
Under changing skies (floribundance) depict
plants of a low open-shrubland with an elusive
shimmering skyline. The artist made these
linoprints in response to visiting Cape Le Grande
National Park, near Esperance. This dry sandy
country and its dense floristic landscapes has
been shaped over time, by the vagaries of wind
and water.

Margaret Sanders, Sandplain heath, near ephemeral water, 2017, Two-part linoprint, 150 x 465mm
 125

Created from the branches of a Melaleuca

tree, Binomial Tree is surrounded by plant tags
featuring three iconic South West plants -
Nuytsia Floribunda, Anagozanthos Flavidis and
Eucalyptus Marginata. Inscribed on each tag
are the Indigenous and Common names of each
plant. Scientific nomenclature gives all living
things a Latin name of two parts, but the dual
naming of plants in this work, posits the science
of plant collection with an older Indigenous
floricultural knowledge.

Margaret Sanders majored in

Communication Studies at Murdoch
University 1979 and has a Diploma in
Museum Studies from the University of
Sydney 1980. She studied Printmaking
at the ANU School of Art in Canberra
1989-1993 with Master Printmaker Jorg
Schmeisser. She recently returned
to Western Australia, after living in
Adelaide for a number of years, where
she worked as a researcher, community
artist and curator.
 126
Stephen
Schulyta
Stephen Schulyta works primarily in
oil on canvas, with a dual focus on
contemporary social issues and the
beauty and re-presentation of the
natural world. He has been painting
prolifically since the late 1990s, when
he picked up pencils and paintbrush
as part of rehabilitation from serious
accidents. Solo exhibitions include
Politics to the Natural World, Bunbury
Regional Art Gallery 2015; Studio
Report from a Strangely Isolated Place,
Kurb Gallery, Northbridge 2013; and
Compilation 4, Bunbury Regional Art
Gallery 2011.
Born 1952, Subiaco, Western Australia;
lives and works in Kirup.
The two driving forces in Stephen Schulyta’s art
practice are the force of nature and the force of
human interaction. Through painting he is able
to reflect and comment on the experiences of
his life, past and present. His seascapes are
influenced by teenage years spend surfing
in the South West, and his landscapes reveal
a love of the Western Australian outback, and
an understanding of Indigenous history of
dispossession developed whilst working as an
exploration technician for mining companies
in the 1970s and 1980s. His works of political
criticism demonstrate the fundamental part
political and social observation played in
Schulyta’s life, growing up in Subiaco after his
parents left Europe at the end of World War II.
His works in South West Art Now are unified by
a concern with the dark side of human nature,
which subsumes and corrodes any natural grace.
Schulyta writes:
“The four works represent contemporary political
landscape; paranoiac control in Australia and
the rise of aggressive nationalism in Europe.
Coongan River and the Binningup shoreline
remind us of a halcyon ‘real’ reality.”
 127

Stephen Schulyta, Coongan River at the Jasper Bar,

2017, oil on board, 320 x 335mm

Stephen Schulyta, Hybrid Fascism, 2017, oil on board,

375 x 330mm

Stephen Schulyta, Morning at Binningup, 2017, oil on

board, 380 x 300mm

Images courtesy the artist.

 128

Karen Born 1964, Perth, Western Australia; lives and works Boallia.

Seaman

Karen Seaman, Interlacing (detail), 2018, ink, pencil, watercolour and fungi spore prints on 100% cotton rag paper laminated on wood, 900 x 2440mm
 129

Karen Seaman has maintained her

studio practice in drawing, painting,
ceramics and sculpture since graduating
from Canberra School of Art in 1988,
with a Bachelor in Fine Art. She was
recently Highly Commended in the
Vasse Art Award and was selected
for the Bunbury Biennale at Bunbury
Regional Art Gallery in 2013. Seaman
has taken part in Margaret River Region
Open Studios since its inception, and
her work was published in the Artists
of the Margaret River Region book.
Her work is exhibited at Jahroc Gallery,
Margaret River and ArtGeo Cultural
Complex, Busselton.

Karen Seaman constructs large images
expressive of the immense complexity of
Australian bush ecosystems. Her current
work explores the link between fungi and
plant kingdoms, which recent discoveries
in microbiology indicate are more closely
connected than previously thought. Her
works incorporate processes of observational
drawing, staining watercolour paper with various
teas and creating delicate prints of pale and
dark fungi spores, by pressing the underside of
collected specimens onto contrasting paper.
The resulting images are intricate and detailed
illustrations demonstrating the complex
interrelationships between technology, nature
and biological processes.
Much of Seaman’s work is concerned with the
environmental degradation she witnesses on her
daily walks around her Boallia property. Her work
Interlacing springs from her finding a discarded
circuit board during one of these walks. Intrigued
by the dissonance of finding this object so deep
in the bush, this incident was the catalyst for this
series of works on paper, which are presented
laminated onto wooden panels. The work creates
an opposition between a construction of nature
as raw material for technical operations, and a
richer understanding of a world in which humans
are fundamentally imbricated in the natural realm.
 130

Helen Born 1949, South Perth, Western Australia;

lives and works in Capel.

Seiver

Helen Seiver has a fundamental belief in the

strength and power of women drawn from the
everyday, civil and domestic experience. Her
various projects endeavour to find processes
with which to investigate and explore
environmental, social, political and cultural
values from a female perspective. Her work
often uses found objects, chosen as signifiers
of place and era. She does not alter these Her installation Gross Domestic Product Series
cultural artefacts, recognising that the materials (V) includes seven found shovelheads, alongside
themselves convey a great deal. Seiver in a cloud forms, which Seiver has welded from wire
sense collaborates with these materials to make and riggers. In these welded clouds, it is the
visible suppressed or repressed meanings. Her pattern of regular movement in welding each
work encourages the viewer to look hard at segment to the next that generates the form,
what already exists in the world of objects to rather than a preconceived concept. Through
discover hidden or unacknowledged aspects. this process of working, Seiver foregrounds
the way in which the form of an object is
not imposed from above, but grows from the
mutual involvement of people and materials in
an environment. The shovelheads equally show
the hand of their makers, as well as traces of use.
They have been formed through actualisation of
a dynamic energy system involving the coming
together of matter, form and worker’s energy.
In this way, Seiver challenges our proclivity for
Helen Seiver makes work that reflects thinking in terms of fully constituted, discrete
the essential part women have played entities or individuals. She is an artist who works
in determining the nature, shape and
structure of female roles and identity.
from within the world, not upon it, reminding us
Since graduating in 2000 from a that meaning is collaboratively and collectively
Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Visual Arts, framed and determined.
she has been a studio artist developing
a practice which embraces painting,
mixed media, and sculpture. Her work
is held in public and private collections
and she currently works as a Lecturer
in Visual Art at Edith Cowan University,
South West.

www.helenseiver.com
 131

Helen Seiver, Gross Domestic Product Series (V) (detail), 2017,

welded riggers, wire and found shovel heads, 1800 x 300 x 100mm
 132

Gracie Born 1993, Bunbury, Western Australia;

lives and works in Bunbury.

Smith

Gracie Smith’s photographs derive from

her movement through the terrain of urban
neighbourhoods and chance encounters
with the geography and architecture of her
environment. These photographs give rise to a
distinctive sense of place, through highlighting
the unexpected in the landscape, with each
element idiosyncratic of Smith’s hometown of
Bunbury. Smith’s work is heavily process driven,
with the choice of equipment, film and chemicals
she uses in developing the photographs making
up the greater part of the final image. She is
also fascinated with digital methods of post-
processing, creating new and experimental
forms through remixing and mash-up. The
resulting photographs problematise the space
between analogue and digital, revealing the
way in which discrete framing operations and
choices are always the constitutive condition
of continuous images.

Gracie Smith is a photographer and

musician whose work investigates
the interaction and conflict between
analogue and digital processes.
She works with 35mm film and digital
manipulation, developing images herself,
often with a caffenol process using
coffee and vitamin C. Smith works full-
time as a professional musician, and
is currently working on projects which
fuse experimental music composition
with visual elements and percussion-
triggered projection.
 133

Gracie Smith, Untitled, 2017, photographs. Images courtesy the artist.

 134

Sue Born 1971, England; lives and works in Yallingup.

Smorthwaite

Sue Smorthwaite,
A Blot on the Landscape I
(detail), 2017,
hand-made wool felt,
natural found wood, metal
and threads, 180x100x60

Sue Smorthwaite is a mixed media and
textile artist, with a focus on handmade
felt as an artistic medium. She works
mainly with Merino wool for much of her
fine felt work and art-to-wear pieces, and
the coarser wools such as Corriedale
for her larger sculptural artwork. She
has exhibited as part of the 2013 and
2015 South West Fashion Festival; 2013,
2014, 2016 and 2017 Sculpture by the
Bay, Dunsborough; and was a finalist in
the 2014 and 2015 Common Threads
Wearable Art Competition, awarded
Highly Commended in 2016. Her work has
appeared in international magazines and
is sold at the Studio Gallery in Yallingup.
135
Excited by the huge potential for handmade felt
as an artistic medium, Sue Smorthwaite draws
inspiration from nature and objects around her,
with pattern and colour an important factor in
her work. She often explores different ways of
combining found objects into her textile work.
A Blot on the Landscape uses various surface
techniques to mimic the shapes and textures
found in native trees when under stress.
Smorthwaite incorporates found branches
and gumnuts into the sculpture to mimic the
bulbous cankers found on diseased eucalypts.
Disguised by being soft and innocuous, the felt
grows and encases the hard, sharp features
of the wood it envelops. In this way, the work
establishes a productive tension between the
inviting softness of wool and a reflexive horror
of contagion. By highlighting the ways in which
natural features of the environment become
changed by and adapted to parasitic invaders,
Smorthwaite questions how we understand our
own impact on the landscape.
 136

Monique Born 1971, Perth, Western Australia;

lives and works in Dwellingup.

Tippett

Monique Tippett has exhibited extensively

in group exhibitions, and held her third solo
exhibition at Turner Galleries, Northbridge
in 2017. In addition to her studio practice,
she has completed several large public
art works for state and local government
projects including the New Perth Children’s
Hospital, Hale House Office of Premier
and Cabinet, Sir Charles Gairdner Mental
Health Unit, Shire of Augusta Margaret
River, Narrogin Agricultural College, and
more. Tippett received a Diploma of
Art in Fine Furniture designing/making
from the Australian School of Fine Wood
and has begun a Bachelor of Art at
Curtin University. She is represented by
Gunyulgup Gallery in Yallingup.
 137

Monique Tippett, Silence, 2017, eucalytus timber veneer, ink, lacquer on board, 1100 x 2380 x 100mm. Image courtesy the artist.

Monique Tippett is a prolific artist, who draws Tippett’s works are made from Western Australian
on her qualifications in fine furniture making to endemic timbers, including inks, acrylic, balga
produce work inspired by the natural landscape resins, charred, gold/silver leaf and tinted
of the South West of Western Australia. Her lacquers. They seek to capture the moods of
practice has developed in close connection the forest; the evocation of landscape through
with the environment and community of the subtle linear geometry and reflection of
Dwellingup, through her past connection to light is joined with the tactile language of bark
the Australian School of Fine Wood, and her and timber whose surfaces and texture provide
present work establishing a gallery and artist a more intimate and material connection. Each
residency program in the town. piece transcends the two dimensional image
and many span the gap between painting and
Silence continues her exploration of the light, sculpture. They are enigmatic, finely crafted
texture and form of the forest. Tippett writes: “The objects that hold the viewer in place, and asks
forest is a multi-faceted world. It has a primitive them to consider their own relationship with
energy and dark beauty that can often hold us the natural world.
at bay, but its alluring light and winding pathways
with their promise of discovery draw us in.”
 138
Chloe
Wilder
Chloe Wilder is a portrait artist working
predominantly in oil on canvas. She
holds a Diploma of Visual Arts from RMIT
2015 and Certificate IV in Visual Arts
from South West Institute of Technology,
Margaret River Campus 2014. Exhibitions
include Tickle My Pickle, Roll Over
Beethoven Gallery, Melbourne; Party
Talk, The Black Cat, Melbourne VIC; WAS
Studios Opening, Margaret River; and
Linden Post Card Show, Linden New
Arts, Melbourne. She has also created a
number of public artworks and murals,
including at Emergence Creative Festival
2017, Margaret River; Love Party 2015,
Moonie Ponds Youth Centre, Melbourne
and Gertrude Street Projection Festival
2015, Melbourne.
chloewilderart.com
Born 1989, Waiuku, New Zealand;
lives and works in Margaret River.
Chloe Wilder started her career in marine
research and gradually realised her desire to
paint fulltime during field work in the Kimberly.
Her current series of oil paintings are a
personal exploration of female relationships
and empowerment. Wilder identifies self-
portraits of strangers on Instagram, which she
interprets as expressing a sense of strength and
femininity. The oil paintings she makes based
on these posts do not merely replicate these
images, but incorporate abstract designs, and
references to her own emotional state during
the making. Wilder then shares the completed
portraits with her unsuspecting models and the
general public as @chloewilderart on Instagram.
By subverting the system of interaction offered
by this social media platform, Wilder reflects
on how meaningful connection can exist in a
digitally-mediated world.
Untitled VIII is ambiguous in tone, with the
woman’s direct eye contact and jutting chin
suggesting both confrontation and intimacy.
The abstract patterning and vibrant colours
undermine Wilder’s photo-realistic rendering
of the woman’s face, heightening the conflict
between physical and virtual. The boundaries
between public and private space are blurred,
too, with the artist emphasising the personal
dimensions of shared images. Wilder says
of her work: “It is strength and defiance, it is
power and lust and yet the innate tenderness
and delicacy that in inherent in all women, the
part that we are told is the weakest and yet has
the most potency”.
 139

Chloe Wilder, Untitled VIII, 2017, oil on canvas, 1500 x 1500mm. Image courtesy the artist.
 140
Christopher
Young
Christopher Young was born in small-town
New Zealand in the mid-seventies. After
finishing his studies he moved to Germany
in 1996 before settling in Western Australia
in 2002. Isolation is a recurring theme
in his life and work – the remoteness of
growing up in semi-rural New Zealand, the
loneliness of living in Germany as a poor
German speaker and the geographic and
ideological seclusion of life in Australia,
have all coloured his artistic practice.
Young majored in Photography with a Fine
Art bias and exhibits on a regular basis in
Western Australia.
zebra-factory.com
Born 1989, Waiuku, New Zealand;
lives and works in Margaret River.
Christopher Young presents his photographs
as discrete series, though each body of work
engages with recurring themes of isolation, and
the language of representation. Young explores
aspects of narrative development through the use
of ambiguity, taxonomic language and contextual
manipulation. He utilises commonplace, ephemeral
scenes and objects to highlight the universality of
human experience.
Eight is a series of images made in spaces that
are normally associated with emotional extremes.
It looks at how the confronting nature of such
spaces affects both the creation of the images
as well as the subsequent viewing experience.
Locations include a hospital, doctors’ surgeries,
funeral homes, churches, garage sales and
cheap hotels. It looks at the paradox of highly-
charged, emotive events in seemingly sterile,
controlled spaces. Young suggests that these
spaces are transformed through emotive
experiences both physically – damage, stains,
patina – as well as in the perception of those
who visit them. A simple building or object can
elicit reverence on the basis of an associated
activity. Equally, a creative experience might
confirm or contradict a personal experience
and can be transformative.
He writes: “This project stems from visits to
funeral homes when my father was ill. The first,
a macabre behind-the-scenes tour prior to his
passing and later for his funeral. I found both
experiences disturbing and thus far unique
in my adult life… The sterility of these places
should be calming and reassuring but I found
their otherness difficult to overlook.”
 141
Christopher Young,
Eight #35, 2017,
inkjet print in an edition
of five, 800 x 640mm

Christopher Young,
Eight #34, 2017,
inkjet print in an edition
of five, 800 x 640mm

Christopher Young,
Eight #31, 2017,
inkjet print in an edition
of five, 800 x 640mm

Images courtesy the artist.

 142
Lists
Crispin Akerman, Copper Bowl,
Seasonal Flowers & Pears, 2017,
oil on linen, 410 x 610mm
Alice Alder, Be Here, 2017,
mixed medium on canvas, 760 x 760mm
Tracie Anderson, Untitled, 2018,
porcelain and found objects, three
vessels: Ø 300 x 400, Ø220 x 320,
Ø180 x 200mm
Tom Ansell, Dry Landscape, 2017,
oil on linen, 135 x 180mm
Tom Ansell, Twirl Cloud, 2017, oil on
linen, 135 x 180mm
Christine Baker, An Uneasy Existence,
2017, acrylic on canvas, clay glaze,
oxiden found objects, drawing collage
photocopy, dimensions variable
Christine Blowfield, Endless Serenity,
2107, acrylic paint on clear acrylic, 1000
x 1000mm
Jeana Castelli, Meltdown, 2018, acrylic
on canvas, 1052 x 920mm
Rebecca Corps, Looking In, 2017, steel,
grass, fabric, 800 x 1000 x 800mm
Molly Coy, Lands and Capes, 2017/18,
artist book, works on paper, 380 x
820mm
Molly Coy, Campsite Day, 2017/18,
mixed media on canvas painting, 820 x
350mm
Molly Coy, Campsite Night, 2017/18,
mixed media on canvas painting,
820 x 350mm
of
Annette Davis, Sentry, 2017,
charcoal pencil on canvas on board,
2300 x 1700mm
Merle Topsi Davis, Sea Enemies, 2017,
salvaged fishing rope, nets and floats
woven over welded steel frames, 1000
x 500mm
Tony Davis, Mantle, 2017, Jarrah, 1800 x
450 x 400mm
Aimee Dickson, My Inner World #1-6,
2018, pen, pencils, texta on paper, 400
x 500mm each
Cynthia Dix, Flora Australis, 2017, acrylic
on canvas, 1220 x 900mm
Jenni Doherty, Oceans of Uncertainty,
2017, oil, lino, gold leaf on canvas,
900 x 1200mm
Jenni Doherty, Oceans Of Uncertainty -
Big Bad Night, 2017, oil, lino, gold leaf on
canvas, 18 panels, 300 x 300mm each
Jenni Doherty, Oceans Of Uncertainty -
Fecund Sea, 2017, acrylic, oil, lino,
gold leaf on canvas, 18 panels,
300 x 300mm each
Yvonne Dorricott, Coastal Flags, 2017,
etching on BFK paper, woodcut on dyed
fabric, 1800 x 2000mm
Tanya Downes, Life in the Balance, 2018,
wood/mixed media,
580 x 350 x 350mm
Paul Elliott, Handbasket, 2017, LPG gas
bottle-cylinder, 300 x 240 x 240mm
Works
Paul Elliott, Feather Bowl, 2017, LPG gas
bottle-cylinder, 120 x 240 x 240mm
Paul Elliott, Fruit Bowl, 2017, LPG gas
bottle-cylinder, 140 x 240 x 240mm
Ashlee Faber, Untitled, 2017, fumage on
litho paper, 762 x 2446mm
Renee Farrant, concerning water, 2017,
roots of plants, 150 x 150mm
Andrew Frazer, Hope on the Horizon,
2018, acrylic and ink on cold pressed
paper, 950 x 720mm
Richard Fry, River bed, 2018,
recycled steel rod, wire and recycled
glass ‘diatoms’, 1830 x 1300 x 200mm
Richard Fry, In your bed and lie in it (to
the memory of my invisible grandmother,
Mary Ann Thompson), 2018, recycled
steel rod, wire and recycled glass
‘diatoms’, 1500 x 900 x 900mm
Richard Fry, More examples of invisible
life (triptych), 2018, oil, acrylic and mixed
media on board, 215 x 250mm each
Anne Grotian, Shades of the past, 2017,
installation, dimensions variable
Roslyn Hamdorf, Canal rocks in winter,
2017, acrylic on canvas, 2100 x 910mm
Sam Harris, Neighbours 1-4, 2017, archival
digital prints, 400 x 500mm each
Catherine Higham, Drift, 2017, giclee,
archival inks, dimensions variable

Sharon Hinchcliffe, At the Peril, 2018,
acrylic and ink on canvas, 610 x 1220mm
Sharon Hinchcliffe, Of Nature, 2018,
ink, graphite, charcoal, pastel on canvas,
610 x 610mm
Patricia Hines, Eggs and Nest, 2017,
bisque fired paper clay, flotsam:
glass, brick, stone, coal and calcified
limestone, glory vine tendrils, string,
dimensions variable
Patricia Hines, The Vanished Birds, 2017,
ceramic, asbestos, calcified limestone,
bone flotsam, steel, Jarrah and Perspex,
under glazes, slip, grout & steel, 380 x
200 x 320mm
Patricia Hines, Beach Bird, 2017,
glory vine, cable ties string, flotsam and
jetsam, 600 x 600 x 1600mm
Cassandra Jetta, Milkar Win, Milkar
Moolyak (New Life, New Beginning),
2018, acrylic on canvas, 900 x 400mm
Cassandra Jetta, Milkar Win, Wiriny
Worlak Yidjowiny (Transforming Spirit),
2017, acrylic on canvas, 1010 x 765mm
Cassandra Jetta, Milkar Win, Kwobidak
Koort (Beautiful Heart), 2018,
acrylic on canvas, 450 x 900mm
Sue Kalab, Prince of Tuarts - Ancestor
Tree, 2017, watercolour, 750 x 550mm
Anastasija Komarnyckyj,
Cascading Light, 2017,
oil on canvas, 1520 x 1060mm
Sue Leeming, A Resurrected Past, 2018,
Oil, ink and gesso on marine ply ink;
gesso, graphite on Hahenemuhle,
1000 x 1000mm
Sue Leeming, Anonymous Stories, 2018,
oil, ink graphite and gesso, black and
white photographs, 1937 on marine ply,
300 x 300mm
Sue Leeming, Generational Loss, 2018,
graphite on Hahnemuhle, 1000 x 1000mm
Peter Little, on the brink, 2017,
watercolour and pen, 1100 x 1600mm
Elisa Markes-Young, The Original Place
2/2018, paper, fondant, wafers, textiles,
1500 x 1500mm
Barbara Maumill, Yellow Robin, 2017,
acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40mm
Barbara Maumill, Garden Gate, 2017,
acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100mm
Sarah McBride, The Bird with the Pearl
Hook, 2017, oil on canvas, 45 x 355mm
Sarah McBride, Quindalup Wane, 2017,
oil on canvas, 610 x 760mm
Sarah McBride, Less-Home, 2017,
oil on canvas, 610 x 915mm
Serena McLauchlan, Jewel, 2018,
holographic tape, 2500 x 3000mm
Lesley Meaney, The Studio Nude, The
Naked Model, #1, 2017, mixed media
inside and outside recycled wooden
cases, 32cm (H) x 74cm (W) x 63cm (D)
Lesley Meaney, The Studio Nude, The
Naked Model, #2, 2017, mixed media
inside and outside recycled wooden
cases, 30cm (H) x 51cm (W) x 35cm (D)
Lesley Meaney, The Studio Nude, The
Naked Model, #3, 2017, Mixed media
inside and outside recycled wooden
cases, 5cm (H) 42cm (W) x 44cm (D)
Sarah Mills, Mother’s Bones, 2017,
photograph, 40” x 47
Peter Moir, Twin Falls - King George
River, Kimberley WA, 2017,
acrylic on canvas, 1820 x 1220mm
Peter Moir, I've got a lovely bunch of
honkey nuts, 2017, watercolour, 2017,
watercolour, 830 x 1070mm
Peter Moir, Common Bronzewing
Pidgeon, 2018, watercolour,
970 x 780mm
Paul Moncrieff, Paint System PM, 2017,
acrylic paint on plywood; together with
glass jars timber, metal hooks, transfer
vinyl lettering, 1280 x 1400 x 200 mm
143
Deanna Mosca, Particles, 2017, acrylics
and oils on drawn canvas, 770x610x40
Kim Perrier, Carbonature Series 2017 #1,
2017, jarrah, charcoal, galvanised steel,
granite, 1900 x 400 x 300mm
Kim Perrier, Carbonature Series 2017 #2,
2017, jarrah, charcoal, galvanised steel,
granite, 2700 x 700 x 500mm
Kim Perrier, Carbonature Series 2017 #3,
2017, jarrah, charcoal, galvanised steel,
granite, 1600 x 500 x 300mm
Geraldine Peterkin, Karijini 1, 2017, fibre,
180 x 450 x 450mm
Geraldine Peterkin, Karijini 2, 2017, fibre,
150 x 340 x 340mm
Geraldine Peterkin, Karijini 3, 2017, fibre,
110 x 330 x 330mm
Laurie Posa, Resurrection, 2017,
oil on board, 1200 x 670mm
Abigail Reid, Urban Density Land & Sea,
2017, oil on canvas, 1700 x 1200mm
Amy Rorke, Blue Wren #1, 2018,
watercolour, gouache, pen, hand-
embroidery, 21cm
Amy Rorke, Blue Wren #2, 2018,
watercolour, gouache, pen,
hand-embroidery, 21cm
Amy Rorke, Scarlet Robin, 2018,
watercolour, gouache, pen, hand-
embroidery, 21cm
Amy Rorke, Pardalote, 2018, watercolour,
gouache, pen, hand-embroidery, 21cm
Elizabeth Royce, Icefall, 2017, mixed
media on paper, 1300 x 1000mm
James Ryce, Point of Balance, 2017,
Candlestick Banksia, 110 x 70 x 220mm
James Ryce, A Bright Heart, 2017,
Jarrah, 250 x 180 x 50mm
James Ryce, Unbreakable, 2017,
Sheoak Coolimon, 260 x 60 x 30mm
 144
Helena Sahm, Binary Restructure
(Architecture Review), 2017,
timber, closed cell foam, paper,
cardboard, ink, graphite, paint,
2500 x 1500 x 400
Helena Sahm, Metaphysical Still Life
with Manufactured Rubble, 2017, closed
cell foam, paper, charcoal, paint, plaster,
acrylic panels, 500x594x1600
Helena Sahm, Mnemonic Abodes #1,
#2, #4 2017, concrete, found materials,
dimensions variable.
Margaret Sanders, Sandplain heath, near
ephemeral water, 2017,
Two-part linoprint, 150 x 465mm
Margaret Sanders, Under changing skies
(floribundance), 2017, Two-part linoprint,
150 x 465mm
Margaret Sanders, Binomial Tree, 2017,
Tree branches (Melaleuca sp.) linoprint,
cut paper, 900 x 700mm
Stephen Schulyta, Coongan River at the
Jasper Bar, 2017, oil on board,
320 x 335mm
Stephen Schulyta, Hybrid Fascism, 2017,
oil on board, 375 x 330mm
Stephen Schulyta, Morning at Binningup,
2017, oil on board, 380 x 300mm
Karen Seaman, Interlacing, 2018, ink,
pencil, watercolour and fungi spore
prints on 100% cotton rag paper
laminated on wood, 900 x 2440mm
Helen Seiver, Gross Domestic Product
Series (V), 2017, welded riggers, wire
and found shovel heads, 1800 x 300 x
100mm
Gracie Smith, Untitled, 2018, installation,
dimensions variable
Sue Smorthwaite, A Blot on the
Landscape I, 2017, hand-made wool felt,
natural found wood, metal and threads,
180x100x60
Sue Smorthwaite, A Blot on the
Landscape II, 2017, Hand-made wool felt,
natural found wood, metal and threads,
180x100x60
Sue Smorthwaite, A Blot on the
Landscape III, 2017, Hand-made wool
felt, natural found wood, metal and
threads, 180x100x60
Monique Tippett, Silence, 2017,
eucalytus timber veneer, ink, lacquer on
board, 1100 x 2380 x 100mm
Chloe Wilder, Untitled VIII, 2017,
oil on canvas, 1500 x 1500mm
Christopher Young, Eight #31, 2017,
inkjet print in an edition of five,
800 x 640mm
Christopher Young, Eight #34, 2017,
inkjet print in an edition of five,
800 x 640mm
Christopher Young, Eight #35, 2017,
inkjet print in an edition of five,
800 x 640mm
 145

Acknowledgments

Bunbury Regional Art Gallery Team Government Partner

Julian Bowron, Department of Government, Sport

Manager Arts and Culture and Local Industries

Alisa Blakeney,
Exhibitions Curator Events Sponsor

Dean Buck, Geographe Wine Industry Association

Assistant Gallery Officer

Anna Edmundson, South West Art Now Major Sponsors

Administration and Operations
Coordinator Edith Cowan University, South West Campus

Donna Fortescue, Southern Ports Authority

Gallery Officer

Michele Grimston,
Education and Communications Officer

Simon Long,
Exhibitions Officer

Caroline Lunel,
Collections Curator/Registrar

Sam Beard,
Daniel Kus,
Stephanie Lloyd-Smith,
Suellen Turner,
Gallery Attendants

Bunbury Regional Art Gallery is owned

and managed by the City of Bunbury
 146

First published in 2018 by Bunbury Regional Art Gallery 64

Credits Wittenoom Street, Bunbury 6230, Australia

www.brag.org.au

This publication is copyright and all rights are reserved. Apart

from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no
part may be reproduced or communicated to the public by any
process without prior written permission. Enquiries should be
directed to the publisher.

© Bunbury Regional Art Gallery 2018

Published in conjunction with the exhibition South West Art

Now, an exhibition curated by Alisa Blakeney and held at
Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, 64 Wittenoom Street, Bunbury,
24 February – 13 May 2018.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National

Library of Australia

Title: South West Art Now: A survey of regional artists of South

Western Australia / Bunbury Regional Art Gallery.

ISBN: 978-0-9953569-8-6

Other Authors: Alisa Blakeney, Michele Grimston

Editor: Alisa Blakeney

Designer: Desmond Tan

Please note that indicative images of
Photographer: Howard Melnyczuk (except where indicated)
artists’ works have been included in this
publication in instances where the work
for the exhibition was not final at the time
of printing. Please note that indicative images of artists’ works have been
included in this publication in instances where the work for the
This publication contains the names and exhibition was not final at the time of printing.
images of Indigenous people who may
have passed away. This publication contains the names and images of Indigenous
people who may have passed away.
Bunbury Regional Art Gallery is on
Wardandi Noongar Land. Bunbury Regional Art Gallery is on Wardandi Noongar Land.