Address: Sidespace Gallery

Presented by Jay Sykes

Opening Dates :
August 1 – 11, 2024
10:00am – 4:00pm daily

Opening Event :
August 11, 2024, 5:30pm

‘Painting my Thesis’ is a series of works based on the figures from my doctoral thesis, ‘Protein Structure and Evolution’, intended to bridge the gap between my previous life as an academic and my current life as a creative.

‘Painting my Thesis’ is intended to bridge the gap between art and science. It is inspired by a brief conversation I had with my PhD supervisors, Professors Michael Charleston and Barbara Holland, in which they (very flatteringly!) compared a graph I produced to a Monet.

All works in this exhibition are based on figures from my PhD Thesis “Protein Structure and Evolution”. The style of the pieces depends on the nature and meaning of the figure it is based on. Each is accompanied with the original figure, as well as a brief explanation concerning its meaning for those interested.

This project is important to me as an ex-academic. Many people, upon hearing that I completed my doctorate and then withdrew from the career path I invested so much time in to pursue life as a creative, rhetoric their way around the fact that they think to do so was a waste. With these works, I intend to prove that no experience in life is wasted. My university experience informs my practice constantly. This exhibition is intended to celebrate this fact.

Opening Dates :
Thursday 11 – Sunday 14 July 2024
10:00am – 4:00pm daily

Opening Event :
Friday 12 July 2024, 5:30pm – 7:30pm

AI now is a body of digital artwork by David Hearne exploring the esoteric nature of how word prompts create a pictorial entity using artificial intelligence. 

Using the portrait as the subject, the themes of beauty and identity have been explored and presented. Exploring the fleeting and everlasting nature of beauty coupled with the currency for a needed conversation on the positive and negative impact digital identity has on our identity, the work will reflect a new vision of how artificial intelligence can be used as a tool in the arts.

“To take the exhibition to another level I have referenced my analog video (vhs) documentation from various performance art installations (from Darlinghurst, Melbourne, Wagga Wagga and Hobart between 1987-1993) in which early investigations of identity were investigated. I converted these tapes to digital mp4 files. Handing them over, (in collaboration with Dylan Oswin) he has run a lens of artificial intelligence (using stable diffusion) over the moving image. The result has created images of hallucinogenic qualities. The forms take on the likes of Piccininni’s hybrid creatures, visions of metamorphic entrails like that used in dissection performances by Nitsch and the mangled distorted and grotesque forms of which I use in my expressive figurative painting style. This further impacts on the two-dimensional work and takes the show to another level.

AI now, is here and is proudly the first digital body of artwork using Artificial Intelligence presented in Hobart. I hope this show evokes a valuable conversation and the place artificial intelligence has in the visual arts.”
– David Hearne

Workshop Date :
Sunday 9 June 2024 
2pm – 4pm

Taroona Collage Club is bringing its weekly goodness to Salamanca Arts Centre in June – in conjunction with the exhibition Patience by Sarah White.
Come along for a relaxing session of cutting, pasting and creating.

Taroona Collage Club hosts a weekly open drop-in collage session for beginners and dedicated collage enthusiasts alike to flip through vintage books and create weird and wonderful artworks.

Cost : $10 (+BF)
All materials are provided (abundant books, magazines, glue sticks, scissors), all you need to bring is yourself.
No experience necessary!

Opening Dates :
Friday 7 – Sunday 16 June 2024  
10am – 5pm Monday – Saturday
10am – 4pm Sunday

Opening Event :
Friday 7 June 2024, 5pm – 7pm

Workshop : Taroona Collage Club x SAC :
Sunday 9 June 2024, 2pm – 4pm

Patience is a series of experimental works on paper by Hobart-based artist Sarah White that reflect on the lessons and consolations of nature.

Botanical art traditionally aims to convey scientific truths about the natural world. This series of works instead invites the viewer to turn that enquiry inward, and to contemplate what the observation of nature and natural rhythms has to teach us about ourselves, our secret truths and our impermanence.

Depicting natural cycles of genesis and death, the images of this series are a meditation on our place in the universe. They are a quiet invocation to be patient with life’s unfolding, and to be present while it does.

Patience is also about the creative act itself. It functions as a visual metaphor for artistic cycles of creation and destruction, the role of repetition in art-making, and the value of patience for all artistic development and practice.

Sarah White works across painting, drawing, printmaking, and mixed media. Her background in science and health research informs her work in terms of an interest in how close, careful observation yields heightened awareness, a greater understanding of ourselves, and a more compassionate view of the world.

Presented by Hobart College

Opening Dates :
May 8 – 19, 2024 
9am – 5pm daily

Opening Event :
May 10, 2024 – 5pm

An exhibition of visual art by Hobart College’s class of 2023.

Every year art students from across the state work hundreds of hours to produce art as part of their course, left unseen expect by peers and teachers.

HoCo Now aims to bring the astonishing talent and diligence of Hobart College visual art students into public, showcasing the skills and vision of our 2023 cohort across ceramics, photography, painting, drawing and everything in between.  

Opening Dates :
Wednesday 22 May – Monday 3 June 2024
Monday – Saturday 10:00am – 4:00pm
Sundays 10:00am – 3:00pm

Opening Event :
Saturday 25 May 2024 @ 11:00am

Crossing Kingdoms is a celebration of our visual and innate connection to fungi and the transformative power of decomposition.

Crossing Kingdoms is a celebration of our visual and innate connection to nature and the transformative power of decomposition. In particular, the unique ability of fungi to colonise decomposed organic matter will be a central thread throughout our work.

Our fascination of fungi and it’s ability to decompose organic matter, and to communicate and share nutrients throughout its mycelium threads, has opened up opportunities for visual exploration.

Megan’s wearable art and soft sculptures represent this fascinating connection between the human body, its decomposition as a natural matter, and the bodies visual similarities to the mycelium network. Natural and/or reused mediums have been utilised in this exploration to create playful and earthy pieces.

Jennifer’s paintings mimic the intricate patterns that are worked below the soil surface, from the branching patterns of the tree roots to the delicate mycelium fungi webs.

Inspired by the comparable visual and nutritional similarities of the fungi mycelium to the veins of the human body, Jennifer has illustrated these intricities in her works.

from the branching patterns of tree roots to the delicate mycelium structures of fungi.

Inspired by the comparable ability of the sharing of nutrients within the fungi mycelium webs and human veins, Jennifer also used thread like veins in her works.

Opening Dates :
Wednesday 17 – Monday 22 April 2024 
9:00am – 5:00pm daily

Opening Event :
Tuesday 16 April 2024, 5:30pm – 7:30pm

Light, water, peace and quiet.

Reflections is an open letter to sunlight. Through Poppy Robinson’s eyes, sunlight is its own creature; swimming through the water and bouncing softly from the skin. In her work, Poppy explores the inevitable feelings of peace and regeneration that come with a quiet moment alone.

With a focus on physical sensation, Reflections seeks to capture a feeling of tranquility and warmth. An understanding that in nature, reliability and impermanence are intertwined and hidden within every rock, plant and drop of water.

Presented by John Hodgman

Opening Event :
Friday 5 April 2024, 6:00pm – 8:00pm

Exhibition to be opened by Ian Jeanneret, photographer, digital artist and printer, framer and previous gallery director and the music of Tasmanian guitarist, Phil Lawler, from Bach to Brouwer and from Chet Atkins to Django Rheinhardt.

This exhibition of oil and acrylic paintings by John Hodgman attempts to capture various aspects of the Tasmanian landscape.

“I have always loved the variety of scenery, from the coast to the mountains.

My involvement in environmental design, architecture, photography and bushwalking have influenced my keen interest in the continually changing environment.

The spirit of the place, the changing weather, light and the variety of locations always amazes me and has a profound impact on my feeling for this wonderful unique island.

The work is centred around my interest in the changing shapes, shadows and textures that are created by different light. I am not interested in realism and pursue an image that relies on imagination.

As a designer and conservationist, I believe in the balance between appropriate development and conservation.”
– John Hodgman

Rebecca Coote, Denise Hallett and Ange Cooper are three artists who share an unwavering passion for the Tasmanian landscape and yet, in dealing with the same concept, their work and perspective of the landscape is very different.

For a number of years Rebecca Coote, Denise Hallett and Ange Cooper have been printmaking together on a weekly basis at a community run (based) studio and sharing ideas about their work. They realised that, although their work is quite different, the landscape is their major concern and inspiration for them all.

The connection each artist has to their surrounding environment has been ever present over the years and articulated through their art practice in both printmaking and painting.

All three artists have their own personal encounters in the landscape and seek to demonstrate their responses by creating works that embrace these strong connections. Their intense reactions to a place or objects in nature are recorded through their observations by drawing, photographing and sometimes plein air painting. This gathered information is taken back to their own studios and expanded upon.

Rebecca Coote is very much influenced by her local setting and investigates the feeling and essence of a landscape through the use of colour.

Denise Hallett approaches her artwork with overtones of surrealism and evokes a sense of conflict between the urban interface encroaching on the natural environment.

Ange Cooper having recently moved from the city is now in a place surrounded by nature, wildlife and birds galore. The colour, fullness and vitality of this work reflects her love and appreciation for this haven she now lives in.

All three artists share an unwavering passion for the Tasmanian landscape and yet, in dealing with the same concept, their work and perspective of the landscape is very different.

Rebecca, Denise and Ange would love to share their most recent body of work consisting predominantly of painting with some printmaking to a much wider audience for all to enjoy.

Opening event:
Friday 8 March 2024, 6pm – 8pm

A duo show of cityscapes expressing silent order vs jazz like improvisation.

Oil painters Greg Ferry and George Kennedy present their latest cityscapes, demonstrating their opposing approaches to painting.

Greg Ferry’s field sketches lean towards tonalism and muted colour with rooftops and buildings that give a sense of the relentless drumbeat of time. They are quiet and contemplative works.

On a different polarity are George Kennedy’s works. Abstractions conveying an energy and randomness of line and succulent colour that one senses when encountering suburbia.

A refreshing duo show juxtopositioning silent order and jazz like improvisation.