Arthouse Gallery is delighted to announce our dynamic exhibition program for first six months of 2025. This coming year features solo shows by newly-represented, emerging artists as well as new works from our celebrated and diverse stable of Australian contemporary practitioners. We really look forward to welcoming you to the gallery in 2025.
group exhibition
'30 years of arthouse, summer edition'
14 January - 1 March
Over the past three decades, Arthouse Gallery has distinguished itself as one of Australia's leading contemporary art galleries. Currently representing over forty artists, the gallery celebrated its 30th anniversary in December 2024 with a major exhibition that brought together works from its impressive collective. The 'Summer Edition' of the exhibition continues until 1 February 2025.
john baird
'Port Jackson, Still Lifes and Otherwise'
6 February - 1 March
Opening Celebration Thursday 6 February, 5 – 7pm
JOHN BAIRD West of North Head, acrylic & shellac on board, 100x 100 cm; John Baird, photographed by James Geer
Distinguished Melbourne artist John Baird who brings his unique aesthetic and practice to the gallery with a brilliant exhibition of new work.
Working across painting, collage and sculpture, Baird explores how slippages between utilitarianism and decoration inhabit everyday objects. With a lingering aura of nostalgia, the sail boat, the dressing table or the floral arrangement are elevated from the commonplace. By consciously conflating foreground and background, Baird forges a surreality that adds a dream-like dimension to his constructed spaces, enkindling our memories and inspiring our imaginations.
Baird has participated in numerous solo and group shows around Australia, and his work is held in major national collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, Artbank and Bell Potter Group, as well as international and national corporate and private collections.
ROBYN SWEANEY AND KENDAL MURRAY
Melbourne Art Fair
20 -23 February
(L to R) ROBYN SWEANEY Out of the blue, acrylic on polycotton, 97.5 x 137.5 cm (framed); KENDAL MURRAY Days Away, Cat's at Play, mixed media assemblage, 51 x 28 x 28 cm
Arthouse Gallery is thrilled to be presenting a dynamic and iconic exhibition with multiple Wynne prize finalist Robyn Sweaney whose intricately detailed paintings depicting houses across Australia have captured the imagination and joy of the Australian public, as well as acclaimed sculpture artist Kendal Murray with her wonderfully created miniature worlds in compacts, purses and antique assemblages.
With these two solo exhibitions by these much loved Australian contemporary artists, we will be transforming our gallery booth into one of nostalgic whimsy and wonder. We invite you to step into this modernist dream where imagination is at play through Sweaney and Murray's enthralling and evocative work.
DEAN BOWEN
'Flourish'
6 - 29 March
Opening Celebration Thursday 6 March, 5 – 7pm
Dean Bowen is renowned for his charming, child-like aesthetic and unique thematic interplay between urbanity and rurality, humanity and animality. With a practice spanning over 40 years and encompassing painting, bronze sculpture and printmaking, Bowen has developed a distinctive and humorous symbolic language that filters through each work. His highly charismatic and whimsical renderings of animals, human characters and Australian environments celebrate the vicissitudes of life, evincing the simple pleasures of human habitation within the artificial and the natural world.
Bowen holds a PhD and an MA from Monash University, as well as a Diploma of Fine Art (Printmaking) from RMIT. He has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas, including Paris, London, Japan, Germany, Poland, Egypt, Switzerland, Spain, China and Slovenia. Bowen has received a number of significant sculpture commissions including Point Leo Estate 2017, Deakin University Burwood Campus 2014, Hamilton Gallery 2014 and the arts/ACT Government Gungalin Commission 2011. In 2023, he opened a major survey exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Takasaki-City, Japan. Bowen’s works are held in many major collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Australia, Australian War Memorial, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Artbank, University of Sydney, Monash University, Queensland University of Technology, University of Melbourne, National Library of Australia, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery and Point Leo Estate.
FABRIZIO BIVIANO
'MONOLOGUES'
3 - 26 April
Opening Celebration Thursday 3 April, 5 – 7pm
FABRIZIO BIVIANO Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water (The Sequel), oil on Belgian linen, 91 x 76 cm; Fabrizio Biviano in his studio, photographed by Jyles Reynolds
Australian artist Fabrizio Biviano has a preoccupation with the past and notions of spent time, both his own and others. Drawing inspiration from the traditions of Dutch still life painting, graphic design and personal experiences, he uses the objects of daily life to produce self-referential work that seeks to examine his personal investments of time, loss and consumption.
Biviano completed a Master of Fine Art from Monash University in 2014. An art instructor by day, he maintains a tireless dedication to his practice. Biviano was a finalist in the inaugural Evelyn Chapman Art Award at S.H. Ervin Gallery (2018) and the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (2018). He was also a finalist in the renowned Arthur Guy Memorial Prize for Painting (2015), the Kings School Art Prize (2024), the Paul Guest Prize for Drawing (2014) and the Belle Arti, Chapman and Bailey Art Award (2010). His work features in the collections of Artbank and the Latrobe University Museum of Art and many private collections in Australia, the USA and the UK.
Scott Duncan
'GARDEN OF EARTHENWARE DELIGHT'
3 - 26 April
Opening Celebration Thursday 3 April, 5 – 7pm
SCOTT DUNCAN, photographed by Silversalt Photography; (L to R) Sweet 'n' Sour, earthenware with glaze, 58 x 23 x 13.5 cm; Fresh Slacks, earthenware with glaze, 59 x 19 x 13.5 cm
Scott Duncan is a dynamic ceramicist whose work is a pastiche of mid-century design and antiquity where the traditional forms of ceramic practice are reconstructed through his whimsical work. Creating his own chalks and pencils, there is an alchemy at play where low and high fuse together creating forms reminiscent of Italian Bitossi Ceramiche and Scheurich Pottery with ceramic food labels delicately sculpted by Duncan resembling faces adhered across the surface in pareidolian amusement.
A chef by trade, Duncan infuses these techniques into his art practice where clay is layered and moulded like shortcrust pastry, taking on forms resembling materials such as congregated cardboard, chewing gum and fruit, mischievously pulling apart the traditional notions of ceramics. Nostalgia plays a part with ceramic form taking on the sweet lollies of youth; musk sticks, bananas and toffees.
Duncan has been a feature artist at Sydney Contemporary (2022) and has previously had three major solo exhibitions as well as various group exhibitions in both New South Wales and Victoria. He is a twice finalist in STILL: The National Still Life Award (2019, 2017) and a finalist in the Fishers Ghost Art Award (2024). His work is part of the Artbank collection, and in 2022 Duncan completed a major commission for the opening of the ACE Hotel Sydney curated by Flack Studio.
ian greig
'WITHIN THE LIGHT OF THINGS'
1 - 24 May
Opening Celebration Thursday 1 May, 5 – 7pm
IAN GREIG Within the light of things, oil on linen, 113 x 173 cm (framed)
Seeking meaning in form and rhythm, Ian Greig approaches painting as a poetic gesture; a means of siphoning the aesthetic and philosophical currency of the world around us. These plays of light suggest a sense of the auditory, where synaesthetic gestures of visual rhythms, timbres and tonalities resemble fleeting musical reverberations. For Greig, the only sound that matters exists in the fractal border between simplicity and complexity. ‘Negotiating this border’, he says, ‘is the hardest thing.’
After graduating in 2002 from the South Australian School of Art with a PhD in aesthetics, Greig exhibited with galleries in Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne before joining Arthouse in 2007. He has participated in over fifty group shows and has been the finalist in various awards including the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (2024, 2021), Liverpool City Art Prize at the Casula Powerhouse (2007), ABN Amro Emerging Artist Award, Sydney and Melbourne (2005) and the Fleurieu Art Prize (2000, 1998) where he won the Nexus Fleurieu International Scholarship and undertook a residency at the Barcelona Institute of Art (2001). As an artist and academic, Greig was Head of Postgraduate Studies at the National Art School until his retirement from teaching in 2022. He is an accomplished writer and speaker and has given many public talks on the philosophy of art. His work is held in public and private collections in Australia, UK, Spain and Canada, including Artbank, Government House SA, and the University of South Australia.
KENDAL MURRAY
'EVERGREEN'
1 - 24 May
Opening Celebration Thursday 1 May, 5 – 7pm
KENDAL MURRAY, photographed by Phillip Flatt; Free Space Misplace, mixed media assemblage within metal compact, 8.5 x 8.5 x 9 cm, 15 x 5 x 7 cm (wall hung display)
Kendal Murray’s miniature sculptures stage dream-like narratives that transport us to a place of wishful thinking, where we are invited to play, imagine, and fantasise about possibilities outside the reality of the everyday. Found objects such as tea cups and saucers, mirrored compacts and grass covered purses are used as eccentric stages for her tiny characters to enact a range of playful and dramatic scenarios. Each tableau vivant in miniature is imbued with social, symbolic and personal meanings that entice us to invest our own desires into the pleasurable outcomes of the stories being told, while offering a mirror to our idiosyncrasies.
Murray has had numerous solo and group exhibitions nationally and her work is held in public and private collections in Japan, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the UK, New York and Australia, including the Powerhouse Museum, Goulburn Regional Gallery, Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, University of Western Sydney, University of New South Wales and the Commonwealth Bank Collection. She has been the recipient of several awards including the Deakin Small Sculpture Prize (2015) and the Beowulf Award in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2015). Her work has also been selected as finalist multiple times in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2023, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2010, 2004, 2001). She holds an MA (Hons) in Visual Art.
COLIN PENNOCK
'JOURNEY TO PARADISE'
31 May - 21 June
Opening Celebration Thursday 29, 5 – 7pm
COLIN PENNOCK, photographed by Will Mansfield; After A King Tide, oil on linen, 64 x 64 cm (framed)
Pennock has exhibited nationally and internationally and his work is held in prominent collections including the University of Ulster, the British Consulate in New York and Washington, the Brian Sewell Collection in London and the Hawkesbury Regional Gallery Collection. Pennock received a residency at NG Creative Art Residency in France (2022) and has been the winner of the Alan Gamble Award, Mosman Art Prize (2005) and a finalist in the Len Fox Painting Award (2016), Mosman Art Prize (2019, 2014) and Fleurieu Peninsula Art Prize (2008, 2004).
leah fraser
'PERSEPHONE'S DESCENT'
26 June - 29 July
Opening Celebration Thursday 26 June, 6 - 8 pm
LEAH FRASER photographed by Will Mansfield; She would keep returning always and evermore, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 122 cm
Leah Fraser's work often serves as a portal to other worlds, dimensions unseen but felt and lived through collective subconscious experience. Working in painting and ceramics, Fraser creates visual threads between what defines the human and spiritual existence as well as the ever flowing vitality of nature. Themes of transformation and metamorphosis reoccur in her work, with celestial, enchanting figures appearing across the canvas in a constant state of movement and flux. Favouring a jewel-like colour palette, Fraser uses elongated fingers, hands, eyes and limbs to create interconnection between the worlds she creates and our own, conveying the fluidity of existence, transcending the work into one of the ethereal and sublime.
After completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts, UNSW, Fraser was granted an Art Production Residency in Arquetopia, Puebla Mexico (2012) and has regularly exhibited throughout Australia in solo and group shows. The artist has also been a finalist in a number of awards, including the Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Award (2024), the Blake Art Prize (2014, 2009), Moreton Bay Art Prize (2016), Kings Art Prize (2019) and the Portia Geach Memorial Award (2017).
AMELIA LYNCH
26 June - 29 July
Opening Celebration Thursday 26 June, 6 - 8 pm
AMELIA LYNCH photographed by Simon Hewson; Echoes of Time I, glazed ceramic, 45 x 28 x 30 cm, Echoes of Time II, glazed ceramic, 28.5 x 27 x 25 cm
Amelia Lynch is a dynamic ceramicist whose tactile exploration of form and surface responds to the natural environment, casting conceptual and visual links with geological phenomena such as rock erosion and stratification. Through formal experimentation with oxides, stains, crackle, crawl and crater glazes, Lynch’s painterly surfaces evoke fragments of flora and fauna. In these biomorphic and geomorphic forms, personal experiences of the landscape collide with shape, scale, and glaze technologies to create sculptures that are intuitive and free, yet refined and technical.
Lynch received a Master of Fine Art from the National Art School in 2020 and has been a finalist in the Gosford Art Prize (2020, 2019). She has been a finalist in many acclaimed prizes including the Fisher's Ghost Art Award (2024, 2023, 2022, 2021), Hornsby Art Prize (2023), Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Prize (2023, 2021) and the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2022). In 2022, she was an invited artist at the Australian Ceramics Triennale in Alice Springs.
IITJA NTJARRA 'MANY HANDS' ART CENTRE
24 July - 16 August
SELMA COULTHARD NUNAY Pmara Nurnaka (Our Home), watercolour pigment on repurposed road sign, 75 x 75 cm
The Iltja Ntjarra artists have dedicated decades of committed artistic practice to the respectful and close study of their Country. These works bring viewers into this practice of Kangkwerrama or respectfully taking notice. For those unfamiliar with Central Australian landscape, the works are captivating depictions of the landscapes. The messages they convey command attention, reworking the words of the colonial state to speak plainly and clearly, to demand respect for Country, its stories and people.
THE HERMANNSBURG POTTERS
24 July - 16 August
Photograph by Bec Capp; Installation view 'The Hermannsburg Potters', Arthouse Gallery 2024
The Hermannsburg Potters are a dedicated group of Western Arrarnta artists creating vibrant handmade ceramic pots that encompass collective and individually lived histories in their distinct Country. The artists continue a 30-year legacy, sculpting and painting their visual histories and contemporary settings, speaking to their cultural beliefs, traditions and values. Featuring Rex Pareroultja Evance, Anita Ratara Mbitjana, Beth Inkamala Mbitjana, Stephanie Ratara Ngala, Alizha Coulthard Panangka, Hayley Coulthard Panangka, Rosanne Coulthard Panangka, Claire Pareroultja, Voight Ratara, Shirley Wheeler.
group exhibition
'30 years of arthouse, PART TWO'
21 August - 14 September
Over the past three decades, Arthouse Gallery has distinguished itself as one of Australia's leading contemporary art galleries. Currently representing over forty artists, the gallery continues its celebration of its 30th anniversary with this second group showcase.
CLIFFORD HOW
18 September - 11 August
CLIFFORD HOW photographed by Will Mansfield; Takayna Layers, oil on linen, 185 x 200 cm (framed)
Clifford How's works meditate on the rugged identity and harsh weather systems of the Tasmanian wilderness. The artist gives significance to form through a palette knife, modelling this primal terrain with a known intimacy. From deep ancient tarns nestled in dolerite basins to exposed plateau sedge land, How’s paintings are suspended in time capturing the unseen and fleeting qualities of place. A restricted palette of mauve, grey-green, bone and black form the visual language of the works, becoming both surface and object: the textural surface of the paint is as much a part of the work as the image itself. Through the multitude of topographies tacitly evoked, the works conjure and clarify the emotion of experiencing these remote destinations.
Clifford How has practised as an artist for over eighteen years and his work has been exhibited extensively in Tasmania and in select exhibitions in Sydney. The recipient of the Hornsby Art Prize (2018), Wrest Point Art Award (2017) and TASART Award (2016), How was also a finalist in the Kings School Art Prize (2024), Calleen Art Prize (2017), Glover Art Prize (2017, 2016) and Paddington Art Prize (2016). In 2018, How's practice was featured in Amber Creswell Bell's 'A Painted Landscape – Across Australia from Bush to Coast' alongside other Australian landscape painters of note.
JO DAVENPORT
16 October - 8 November
JO DAVENPORT photographed by Karen Webb; Nevermore, oil on linen, 185.5 x 185.5 cm (framed)
Jo Davenport’s lyrical oil paintings inhabit the liminal resting place between real, imagined and remembered landscapes. In a world grappling with the ecological consequences of human activities, Davenport's paintings are more than just representations of the landscape; they are heartfelt declarations of the enduring significance of our environment.
Davenport won the acclaimed Paddington Art Prize in 2024 for her work 'River Bank', and has been a finalist in a number of prestigious awards including the Len Fox Painting Award (2024), Paddington Art Prize (2023, 2017), Tattersalls Landscape Art Prize (2013), R&M McGivern Award (2012), Langridge Painting Award (2011), Shelmedine Acquisitive Art Award (2010), Alliance Francaise Award (2010) and Pigment Gallery Award (2010) at the Victorian College of the Arts. She has completed extensive studies including a Master of Fine Arts and a Postgraduate Diploma of Visual Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, and an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts, Riverina Institute. She was the recipient of the Chippendale World Art Residency (2017) and Artist in Residence at Hill End, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (2015). Her work is held in many important collections including Artbank, University of Melbourne, Norman Foster Club House Tai Po, Hong Kong, Wangaratta Regional Art Gallery and ArtStream Investment Group, as well as private collections in Australia, UK, France, Canada and Japan.
NICOLA MOSS
13 November - 6 December
NICOLA MOSS photographed by Kate Holmes; The Rocks Called, acrylic and paper on linen, 171 x 171 cm (framed)
Probing the intersection of politics and ecology Nicola Moss' collaged works highlight the importance of green spaces amid congested urban environments. Relying on an archive of papers coloured using paint, graphite, printmaking and various stains, Moss' materials travel with her as she explores the physical landscape. Impressions from tree bark frottage rubbings, for example, become collaged elements of her compositions. Framing nature as a source rather than a resource the artist highlights how intrinsic sustainable green spaces are to our well-being, both physical and mental.
Moss has exhibited throughout Australia, Japan, Sweden and the USA, was awarded the Moreton Bay Region Art Award (2012) and in 2019 was selected to participate in the artist in residence program at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice. She has been a finalist in numerous awards including the pretigous Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW (2025), Len Fox Painting Prize (2022), John Leslie Art Prize (2020), Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (2019), STILL: National Still Life Award (2019) and Sunshine Coast Art Prize (2018, 2017, 2014). Her work is held in many important collections including the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, Moreton Bay Region Art Collection, HOTA (Home of the Arts) and the Social Securities Appeals Tribunal, Brisbane.
