In Sam Michelle’s exhibition Play at Martin Browne Contemporary, oil paintings of flora, textiles and vessels become metaphors for childhood creativity—a spirit that adulthood often risks losing.
In delicately detailed works that reference home-grown flowers and collected vessels and textiles, Michelle’s paintings exist in a tradition of persuading viewers to find joy and pleasure in the foundations of life: home, domestic tasks, work, and friendship.
The artist explains, “As an example. You may see that portions of fabric are used to represent a snake, and stripes on another fabric are used to represent the rungs of a ladder. Another playful example is vessels and flora constructed to resemble a jenga tower. These paintings are fun compositions of games which when played as an adult, bring out our inner child.”
View, in pictures, Michelle’s call to creativity and play.
Sam Michelle, Twister Tapestry, 2023, oil on canvas, 156 x 186 cm.
Sam Michelle, Tile 9, Play, 2023, oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm.
Sam Michelle, Tile 13, Play, 2023, oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm.
Sam Michelle, Amazing Grey Poppies & Plums, 2022, oil on canvas, 38 x 65 cm.
Sam Michelle, Tile 8, Play, 2023, oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm.
Play
Sam Michelle
Martin Browne Contemporary
25 May – 17 June 2023
Trevor Yeung’s art draws on moments of quiet, dawning intimacy between people—interactions which are immensely felt yet so difficult to express. The Hong-Kong based artist is in this year’s Biennale of Sydney at White Bay Power Station and Artspace.
With a practice stretching over 50 years, celebrated artist Jill Orr is known for working with her body and centering responsibility towards our environment and place. In her latest exhibition at Linden New Art, Orr revisits an earlier series from 2012—and what it can tell us today.
In their first joint exhibition together, the couple Dana Harris and Peter Atkins share their separate three-year-long projects made during the Melbourne lockdowns, delivering a shared interest in geometry and colour in SUPERsystems at TarraWarra Museum of Art.
In her latest exhibition at Flinders Lane Gallery, Kathrin Longhurst highlights the resilience of women through paintings that subvert the traditional male gaze, and instead aim to empower.
CREATION is a new religion by artist Deborah Kelly, radically rethinking how we collectively come together. Having engaged with communities nation-wide, inviting audiences to dance, sing, listen and perform together, Kelly is now taking CREATION to regional Victoria. Curator Ineke Dane talks with Kelly about why she wanted to start a new religion, and where it will go in the future.
In 1841, the women aboard a British convict ship crafted a large-scale quilt known as ‘The Rajah quilt’. It’s one the most requested items from the National Gallery of Australia’s collection—and it’s now showing alongside a further 21 quilts, many crafted by women.
