UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
25.07.25 - 30.08.25
First Space
Surrounded
Graeme Gardner
I listen, but it’s beyond listening. The offering has an earthliness, and you can sense the respect and the enjoyment of these ‘coes’ being together. The music transfers you into a dim lit room of arched timbers where glints of serrated light clutter to enter a small square window with haste to magnetise on darken faces. I imagine a grass matted floor, with pots stacked, a cooling kettle, a rickety stool upon which two spoons lay crossed and the aged pine furniture most awkwardly placed. Yep, I’m that brat of a child defying calls of bedtime to sneak a look, with eyes fixated on the illuminating presence of such noble people.
Such is the clarity in which each song is sung that I depict the daily life of a distant people, so often smothered by relatives whose transient nature is revealed when the practise of culture summons their presence. As each song passes, I continually challenge my thoughts. While trying to decipher the messages that are cradled within the lyrics, the fascination is magnified by my uncertainty as to the owner of each distinctive tone and the conductor of each instrument. - from Distant Sounds, Graeme Gardner
Bio: I am a palawa man, with my ancestry on my mother’s side of the family. I am the youngest (twin) son of Furley Gardner (nee Mansell) and Raymond Gardner. My mother was raised on truwana / Cape Barren Island. It is the Furneaux islands that much of my cultural learning and motivation emanates.
I am passionate, and privileged, to champion matters for the Aboriginal community, such as protecting Aboriginal heritage, equality and cultural identity. These issues are all consuming and, at times, stressful. So, I needed an ‘outlet’ to cope with it all.
I found expressing my (diverse) thoughts in writing, along with the sharing of my photos has had a beneficial impact for me. I’m privileged to have been to places of significance and use my photos of Lutruwita by bringing them to the community.
My photos and writing make me feel healthier. I regain the capacity to hold a presence of leadership to challenge social injustice. I simply wish to bring cultural prosperity to my people.
Inner Space
Tammy
Tammy (in essence, a human-scaled sculptural figure of a dog) is an enigmatic and benign presence who willed herself into existence through an entirely intuitive making process.
She is part illusion, but one that is fully, and transparently exposed - wonder AND truth - a kind of support animal with the bearing of a deity.
Easily mistaken for a random collection of objects from the corner of a cluttered home, she is supported and balanced by a library of useful knowledge and guidance for navigation of the anthropocene. Like most dogs, she’s eager to assist and a touchstone for goodness in a confusing climate. The diversity of their species, a sound reminder of what an accident of time and chemistry it is that any of this exists at all.
Bio: Dr . Sally Rees is an artist whose practice signals to supernatural and mythical realms using a diverse range of old and new media, high and low tech. Often employing found materials, images and concepts lifted from popular culture and her direct environment, she creates artworks that honour the legacy of a more enchanted, less rational existence.
Rees is represented by Bett Gallery and lives and works on the unceded lands of the Leenowwenne people of the Big River Nation in Lutruwita.
Back Space
Blessed are the Dead
Neve Curnow and Emma Lyn Winkler
Blessed are the Dead is an immersive multimedia installation that will transform Sawtooth’s Back Space into a haunted cemetery, addressing anxiety, death and sexuality through Victorian spiritualism, escapology and cemetery symbolism. This ambitious, experimental project combines ceramics, video, painting, leadlight and props into a thought-provoking exhibition that makes confronting topics more accessible through humour and absurdism.
Neve and Emma’s artistic partnership stems from common research interests surrounding death, theatre, and spiritualism. Through a shared methodology of utilising art-making to think through difficult topics, their narrative-based practices come together to produce playful works.
Through Blessed are the Dead, Neve and Emma draw parallels between the Victorian era and the present to explore the connection between anxiety and death, using absurdism and camp to approach dying, sexuality and art a bit less seriously.
Bio: Neve Curnow is a contemporary artist whose practice fuses film, photography, leadlight, and object-making. Neve's work explores Gothic aesthetics and tropes within a rural context, inviting viewers into a realm of gothified sheep farms, hot monsters, and B-horror aesthetics. Her art combines escapist fantasies with the realities of queer existence in rural Australia.
At the core of Emma Lyn Winkler’s practice is the question of how to deal with death as the ultimate, inevitable unknown. Through nonsense diagrams, intricate, layered paintings and slapstick animations with visceral textures and messy ends, Emma encourages viewers to find humour in the inevitable.
The Space
Inner Spiral
Kelly-Marie Lewis
Nature is a source of self-reflection and intuitive understanding. Growing up on an island, the coastline was a place for walking and wondering. I would come home with pockets of trinkets dropping sand, and study and admire the treasures I brought home. Inner Spiral uses the shell as a metaphor for states of becoming and self-acceptance.
The perfect shell as a thing of beauty could be seen to reflect the value of self. Shells are essentially armour, defensive structures, appreciated for their ornamentation. Through wear and impact, the broken shell reveals a new form. When the façade breaks, it reveals a whirling vortex - a beautiful chaos. We are, at our core, a perfect inner spiral.
Bio: K-M Lewis completed a Diploma of Art, Craft and Design, specialising in printmaking, prior to a Bachelor of Contemporary Art. Her practice is based in printmaking and photography. Often working collaboratively, she has contributed to public and community-based projects, facilitated in youth programs and her own workshops and taught in the vocational education sector. She is currently undertaking her Bachelor of Fine Art Honours.
Image credits (top to bottom)
Image credit courtesy of the artist.
Image credit courtesy of the artist. Detail of ‘Tammy’ 2024. Video loop, glass and found objects.
Installation View: What Remains (2025), oil painting and mattress springs, Emma Lyn Winkler. Image by Neve Curnow.
Image details: Wave Force, 2025, photographic print. Courtesy of the artist.