“My homeland of Tasmania is a natural setting for landscape photography. The untouched temperate rain-forests, world heritage areas and coastal scenery is simply breathtaking. A plethora of famous walking tracks, well-formed and sometimes not well known within the island, lead to locations perfect for capturing images that I try to showcase with my photography.”
– Samuel Allen
Opening Event
Thursday 15 September 2022
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Free to attend, subject to capacity.
The opening event for Vacancy is sponsored by Spotty Dog Brewers
Vacancy is a series of self-portraits representing my body as language, within parameters of specific, often confined, space. Body placement is expressed through a process of conformity and contortion within a space that holds everyday normalcy. The form is both disruptive and illusionary — seeking comfort and filling the void through isolation and retreat.
I once thought hotels to be romantic places, and maybe they were at one time. These days I find them mostly clinical, attempting to lull me into a false sense of comfort and security. Despite this, the hotel room has been my sanctuary for many years. I traveled a lot for work. A nomadic life that appeared glamourous but in actuality was bound by limited space and time. Whilst being on the road, I found myself fighting to make space, to discharge and find retreat in a time-poor reality. The hotel room was often my only respite from the rushed, high-energy experience of putting on a show. These transient spaces gave me both limitations and opportunities for experience and expression to shape my work.
While the elements of interior/exterior maintain plausibility within the work, placing my body within these spaces interrupts a seamless reading, prompting the viewer to question the presence of the body as landscape… Vacancy draws attention to the body’s purpose, flexibility and limitations in relation to space…
Bodies are markers of self … and what is self but a body that relates to space, holds space, takes up space, finds space, makes space and leaves space.
Eddie James
Eddie James is an emerging artist based in nipaluna, Hobart, Tasmania. Influenced by a career on the road, her practice explores the human capacity to see and read body language. She engages with the mind/body connection in creating action, reaction, emotion and physicality. James uses the body, movement and the tactile processes of analogue/alternative photography and printmaking to create a visual tension that highlights displacement, comfort, isolation and freedom. With the use of architecture, light and form, James translates a deep listening of space into a visual experience.
Eddie James trained at Swinburne University, School of Theatre and Performance, completed a Diploma of Visual Arts at the Newcastle Art School in 2019 and is now completing her BFA at The University of Tasmania. In 2020 she received the ‘Cobra’ Award from Contemporary Art Tasmania with which she then created the work ‘Walk On’. This project was picked up by 10 Days On the Island and a further iteration was created specifically for the festival. James has been selected as a finalist in numerous art prizes, including, twice, the Newcastle Emerging Art Prize. She is the current (2022) winner of the Women’s Art Prize Tasmania. The Judging Panel for this award was unanimous in its choice, saying; “In this work, Eddie James offers a multitude of narratives in a soft-focus ambiguous world. Room 18 is a strong well-conceived work with a timeless quality using the body as a disrupter in a transitory, illusory and disquieting space.”
In Other-Worldly, Britt Fazey plays with the definition of home and connection to the natural world. Could the practice of nurturing our connection with the natural world help us to re frame the overwhelming distractions of modern life? Could it help free us and make us more effective participants in our own lives?
Opening Event : **Event has reached Capacity**
Wednesday 7 September 2022
5:30pm – 7:30pm
Free to attend, subject to capacity.
The opening event for Other-Worldly is sponsored by Spotty Dog Brewers
Britt Fazey
After travelling as far west as Shark Bay and as far north as Cook Town, Britt Fazey now resides in her hometown in Tasmania. Having spent her childhood on the waters of the Derwent river and its lower estuaries Britt again takes to the water to explore, reconnect and define home.
An exhibition of works on paper, including printmaking, photography, drawing and collage. Intimate portraits show each plant, or plant part, as something precious and intriguing. The works emphasise form and pattern and the diversity of shapes and designs found in nature. They celebrate the mysterious nature of plants, and draw the viewer into the inner reaches of other organisms which may sometimes seem alien and sometimes familiar.
Anna Brooks has a great love of plants. This began when she was a child roaming around in bushland on the family farm, continued through a degree in Botany, and years of bushwalking in many wonderful places. Brooks completed her Honours in Fine Arts in 2021. Almost all of her art is about the natural world.
Opening Event
Friday 9 September 2022, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
TasPride’s annual Artfully Queer Exhibition and Arts Program showcases the creative talents of emerging and fully fledged contemporary Tasmanian lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer artists, designers, craftspeople and performers, responding to the theme ‘transform’.
As always, interpret, challenge, expand or illustrate as creatively as you like.
Curated by Phoebe Adams.
Be part of it!
Artfully Queer is open to all Tasmanian LGBTQ creatives and their families. All mediums and levels of ability are welcome. This years theme is ‘transform‘ and we ask exhibitors to consider the theme and respond to it in their work or choice of entry. For more details on how to enter your art, craft, design work into this years Artfully Queer exhibition at the Long Gallery at Salamanca Arts Centre, please see the link below.
Southern Light is intended to increase public awareness of the beauty of Antarctica, and the important work that takes place to protect this unique environment.
“I have not been to Antarctica. However, it has become an important part of my life over the past ten years. I have been married for ten years, and my husband has spent a third of that time in Antarctica. It has become part of our relationship, and we also have a close circle of friends who visit Antarctica regularly. It is a place I have developed a strong connection to, through my indirect experience as an artist.
As a painter, I am drawn to colour and light, and the light of Antarctica is something I have found captivating in the images I have seen. I have created a series of semi-abstract landscapes depicting the natural beauty of Antarctica, to show the importance of taking care of our Antarctic legacy. I do hope to travel to Antarctica one day, and capture the beauty I see with paint. For now, I shall share my interpretation and experience through the people in my life with you.”
– Hannah Blackmore
“Life draws : squiggles, paw-prints, and traces – imprints of brachiopod shells from hundreds of millions of years ago in the mudstone of our garden. Less fixed are the flight-lines of insects and birds; harder to spot are the underground drawings of worms, roots, and billions of microscopic creatures. Life is everywhere, even in the darkest underwater. How it wriggles, squeezes out of tight spots, returns after disasters and thrives, or hangs by the thinnest of threads… fragile threads so easily cut: species lost, links severed.
We draw too : tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors drew with charcoal and ochre on rocks and in caves. Humans have drawn with enormous stone structures, and tiny shell beads, with feet leaving footprints and tracks like wallabies do. We continue to mark the world as we cut and build, dig and dredge. We remove mountain tops, re-route waterways, change everything… our marks getting bigger and bolder.
For me, drawing is mark-making and conversation, listening and responding with charcoal on paper, or tearing, scrumpling, wrapping, pinning. It’s a way of getting to know intimately, distilling the essence of something; a way to explore edges: animate|inanimate, animal-self|human-self. I draw upon life which has drawn me, which still draws me: not just the lines on my hands, but my whole way of being in the world, and what I cherish the most.”
– Marinelle Basson
Understanding the continent is key to a deeper understanding of climate, weather and sea level changes. As a nation, Australia has an enduring commitment to protect and preserve Antarctica for future generations.
Originally inspired by a need to break through some mental health barriers, Nick’s work is a great insight into the artists mind and the 3-year journey involved in coming out of a difficult time and building up a whole new perspective on life.
Coming from a background in mountain biking and a love of hard metal music (the pieces are named after lyrics from Nick’s favorite bands and musicians), Nick’s unique style is both dark and brightly energetic.
All works are archival inkjet printed on 100% cotton rag museum grade paper by Papermill Printhouse (Melbourne) and Full Gamut (Hobart) and are all framed by Hobart’s finest Wagner Framemakers.
All prints are available for purchase.
Merchandise, stickers and other accessories are also available for sale down in Spacebar Gallery.
Nick Hills
Nick Hills is an emerging artist based on Tasmania. Nick specialises in digital illustration, creating colourful thought-provoking works.
The Annual Exhibition is the highlight of the Art Society of Tasmania calendar. Artists submit work created in the last 12 months to be judged for prizes from sponsors. Artworks include representation of all mediums and genres, and showcase the skill, talent and imagination of local artists.
The 138th Annual Exhibition is proudly supported by : Artery, ARCFramerite, The City of Hobart, Phil’s Framing, Lauder and Howard Antiques and Fine Art, Just Frames, Wagner Framemakers, AdArt.
