Event Type: Free

Launch Event
Thursday 23 February 2023
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Vivi al Ago launches their AW23 Urba Collection

A capsule wardrobe of essential pieces that give form to the essence of urban living.
Masculine shapes are softened with feminine detailing.
The warmth of luxe wools, velvet, and the coolness of silk capture the feel of urban winter.
Classic black, the warmth of sandstone and the coolness of midnight, reflect the winter cityscape.
Inspired by classics and modern architectural minimalism.
The merging of simplicity and timeless quality.

Vale is a collection of paintings by Lorna Quinn, created after an experience with a mountain plain in the Central Highlands in 2020.

“As a tourist looking in from a designated viewing platform, I found pleasure in imagining living on the slopes of the mountain as a bat or a worm or as a gust of wind. At the same time, I felt a sense of pain at the remoteness of this vision of dwelling – an absolute separateness from it. These two feelings, of inhabiting, and of outsideness, tangled together in a sort of ache, a longing, that I decided to represent in paint. Using a combination of holiday snaps, memory, and invention back at home, I repetitively formed and reformed the hills that I could remember in careful experiments with colour, texture and shade.  

Returning to the viewing platform two years later, I found that my impression of the place had shifted. The idea of the mountain scene had grown so complete in its absence that the real thing felt pale and diminished, the paintings more concrete.”
– Lorna Quinn

Lorna Quinn is a Melbourne based artist, creating small-scale portraits of vegetation, rock, earth and sky. Her practice considers the triangular relationship between landscape, personal experience and painting.

Opening Event
Friday 17 February 2023
5:00pm – 7:00pm

Enter a gallery space transformed – by designers, using seaweed-derived products – into a ‘speculative vision of a future home’, where a regenerative relationship between humanity and earth (and seaweed) has blossomed.

It’s 2046 and a decade has passed since a society inspired by seaweed has taken to the seas. The roots stem back to Hobart and the innovation that started in the 2020s. It’s a place of refuge for those in the Pacific Islands who have lost their homes to rising seas and the changing climate. On the outskirts of the city are sustainable floating ‘pods’ inspired by the buoyant air sacs or pneumatocysts of the giant kelp. In the city the larger buildings are stretching above and below the surface. The lifeblood of these speculative homes is seaweed, once highly neglected, now essential to the daily life of humans and their hope for the regeneration of the ocean.

Transforming the gallery space into our speculative vision of a future home, Pneu invites visitors to enter the regenerative living space of 2046. Work from a desk made from seaweed that has sequestered C02 and anthropogenic nitrogen. Be bathed in the light of a lamp that has improved marine biodiversity. Host your friends at a dining table that has alleviated eutrophication and acidification. Look out of the porthole to share in our vision for the future, one surrounded and supported by seaweed. 

Pneu is a speculative design installation about the future of the seaweed industry in Tasmania by three up-and-coming young designers. With practices ranging from architecture to furniture to marine biology and cinematography, the exhibition explores the potential of seaweed to reshape humanity’s relationship with our home, the planet Earth.

Pneu is part of the International Seaweed Symposium (ISS) and MONA FOMA 2023

Opening Event
Sunday 12 February 2023
6:00pm – 8:00PM
Exhibition to be opened by Lucienne Rickard (speeches at 6:30pm)

New paintings by Jane Flowers, furniture and sculpture by Ned Trewartha This joint exhibition examines the connection between the ‘Elements’ and ‘Shelter’. At sea amongst it, in an anchorage seeking it and ashore being comforted by it.

Jane Flowers

Maritime artist Jane Flowers loves to capture the many moods of our ocean and waterways and express the pleasure of being in, on or around the water.

Her new paintings express themes of sea and sky, wind and water, the shape of sail and the pleasures of beachcombing.

Jane Flowers loves to immerse herself in nature and has always vowed  “I cannot paint what I haven’t seen, heard or felt on my skin.
Some may say that doing a couple of Melbourne to Hobart Westcoasters and a Sydney Hobart yacht race may be taking things to extreme…There is no doubt that many of her seascapes are inspired by being offshore and experiencing nature’s elements at their best. At the same time much of her work offers shore based vistas of calm reflection admiring Tasmania’s beauty in its quiet and nurturing stillness.”

Ned Trewartha

Ned Trewartha is a traditional wooden boat builder and furniture designer/maker.

He is well known for his clinker dinghies handcrafted from select Tasmanian timbers, building only a few a year now. More of his time is spent creating furniture, and when time allows small sculptures and ukuleles.

He is passionate about the sustainable use of Tasmanian timbers and believes they are unique and precious and should be treated with great respect.  He carefully selects for each individual project to minimise waste. He does not like waste. His small sculptures are made from offcuts from the boatbuilding process.

Ned uses old recycled timber from wherever and whenever he can and cannot understand how these aged timbers with so much character can be discarded as no longer useful. The hard won patina of age should be celebrated not trashed, and he is not afraid to show off those battle scars and what some may see as faults, rather adhering to the concept of ‘wabi sabi’.

Some of Ned’s furniture has a sculptural element but always maintains form and an honest functionality.

He feels absolutely privileged to be able to work with timbers such as Huon Pine everyday.

His workshop/gallery/home is in Woodbridge on the beautiful D’Entrecasteaux Channel.

Opening Event
Friday 3 February 2023
6:00pm – 8:00pm

Layers of monochrome became earth, sky, abstracted fields, wheat and grass twisted, flattened and forced – a changed landscape. From Nina Keri‘s psyche comes images of Ukraine as the breadbasket. Food, sustenance, life – threatened again by war. Borderland consists of eight works painted in heartfelt response to Ukraine.

“For several years the theme of my artwork has been my maternal family history – of life in Ukraine before and during the Second World War.  Specifically, the stories from my Russian Grandma.  I have shaped her stories into forms that are carriers of a deep family narrative of survival and continuation despite the destruction of war.  Part of me has always experienced Ukraine through my Grandma’s stories.  It is an almost fairy tale place in my psyche.  In my mind’s eye I see the farm, the many creatures that shared the life of the family, horses, cattle, pigeons, rabbits, a pet fox and a pet wolf, the great expanse of Steppe. green and verdant, where Grandma would ride.  But as with all fairy tales, there is darkness and evil.  I also see the cattle train taking my grandmother away, and her beloved uncle running after it.  It’s a real place, but I have never been there.  Yet in my DNA lies the deep rich soil, maybe alongside bits of broken china, rusty nails and animal bones.  To see this world of my imagination down the barrel of a soldier’s gun, uploaded to tiktok, is almost indescribable for me. 

On the 24th of February 2022, to my shock and disbelief, Russia invade Ukraine.  Four days into the war I started painting without concept, in a cathartic state, to release my mental and emotional anguish.  Layers of monochrome became earth and sky, abstracted fields, wheat and grass that’s twisted, flattened and forced – a changed landscape.  From deep in my psyche comes images of Ukraine as the breadbasket.  Food, sustenance, life – all this is threatened again by war.  I allowed myself free rein in the creative process.  If an image came to mind, I would honour it.  If there were suggestions in the beginning of a work, I would follow them.  I have named this exhibition Borderland.  It consists of eight works painted in heartfelt response to Ukraine.”
– Nina Keri

Opening Event
Friday 20 January 2023
5:30pm – 7:30pm

Tasmanian bird paintings and limited edition prints by Belinda Kurczok. 

A graphic art installation featuring The Tree of Life with geometrical patterns, floral motifs, and Arabic Calligraphy by visual artist Halima Bhatti.

The Arabesque art coupled with geometrical patterns, motifs and Arabic Calligraphy made on The Tree of Life symbol, which is used by many cultures. This Turkish floral version captures vibrant colours often used in architecture in the Ottoman era.

The work is a manifestation of cultural Islamic art that artist has deep connections with, which focuses on the spiritual representation of objects and beings, made with the Tree of life symbol, which is a metaphor for the interconnectedness of all beings.

“Only by recognizing our roots, we can flourish in life, with wisdom, power and prosperity” – Halima Bhatti 

Opening Event
Wednesday 8 February 2023
5:30pm – 7:30pm

Hobart to Yaizu is a series of digital illustrations by emerging artist Corey Sparkes inspired by the little known link between two cities.

“Yaizu is the sister city of Hobart’ is something you don’t hear often, if not at all.

I remember learning about Yaizu in school and thinking to myself, “hey this is great!” However, aside from Kanjiro Harada’s stunning Japanese Garden that is located within Hobart’s Botanical Gardens, there is very little in the way of promotional material in regards to this fact.
This body of work exists as a promotional piece for both cities, identifying their shared characteristics in regards to landscape and environment through a minimalistic approach that explores the use of colour, limitation and indulges the idea of “play” rather than work or accomplishment.

Overall these pieces intend to serve as a cleansing moment of simplicity in our lives that can often be overwhelmed by chaos and complexity.”
– Corey Sparkes

At the end of 2019, Tasmanian-born Kristina Vermey set herself a challenge: to swim each day in nature.

One year turned into two until the days reached a thousand. A thousand days of anticipation, trepidation and exhilaration. Of noticing the shifting seasons: The changing illustration of sun and tide; the sea sparkle in Summer and snow melt in Spring; the morning adornment of river and sky. 

A Thousand Days at Sea documents this journey in a series of transcendental seascapes. It is at once a story of homecoming and a celebration of beauty, ritual, healing, addiction and finding comfort in pain.

The annual Hunter Island Press (HIP) Mini Print Exhibition and Sale showcases the different printmaking techniques and variety of subjects undertaken by its members. 

The fine art prints are all a uniform paper size of 21cm x 21cm and are affordably priced at $40 each.

The work is pegged around the room and customers are encouraged to help themselves to the print they would like to purchase in an untraditional gallery style way. As a print is sold, it is replaced with another by the same printmaker. This may not necessarily be the same subject or technique as participants are unrestricted for this Exhibition. Sales are made on a first come, first serve basis.