Short texts on Gippsland artists

2021

Mandy Gunn

Mandy Gunn's work reflects natural and synthetic environments with a particular interest in found and recycled materials. Gunn reimagines a purpose for these materials beyond everyday use by referencing the environmental concern for excessive waste produced through the modern lifestyle.

Constructivism has been a strong influence from early on, which Gunn has carried through her practice today. De-constructing, abstracting, collaging, and assembling commonly used items into sculptural constructions and installations are part of Gunn's processes, often linked to textile techniques such as weaving. Gunn began her practice with weaving in 1971, experimenting with unconventional discarded materials like recycled film tape and old phone books and transforming these objects into intriguing new forms.

A progression from weaving with found material, Gunn produced the series WRAP(T) in 2012, one of many series that translates the warp and weft of weaving into a three-dimensional construction. The series makes use of shopping bags and packaging, hand-cut and layered in calculated patterns. The undulating contours of the forms take on an op-art effect as the existing colours and type of the packaging is woven throughout the object.

Mandy Gunn frequently exhibits in solo and group shows across Victoria, interstate and internationally. She is also highly experienced in teaching textiles and construction processes, running workshops in galleries, private classes and tutoring in tertiary institutions. She lives and works in the small town of Tarwin Lower.

Heather Shimmen

The figurative expressionist style of Heather Shimmen's work draws on several influences, including historical imagery produced between the 16th and 19th centuries, mythology, tribal cultures, decay, and colonial histories. Through her richly layered prints, one is invited to investigate the resulting stories that emerge from the details, often crossing over between imaginative and factual narratives.

Shimmen worked closely alongside many artists from the ROAR studios artist group in her early career, conceived in 1982. Sarah Faulkner, David Larwill, Jill Noble and Wayne Eager were among twenty artists who founded the group to revive expressionism during a time when there was an increasing shift to critical ideas in Australian art. The influence of the patchwork aesthetic of the ROAR group can be found evident in Shimmen's compositions and her collaging of elements from various sources.

In The ubiquitous balance, a bird meets the hand of a character existing beyond the frame. The layered fabric, also retaining an impression of the linocut image, adds dynamism and obscurity to the picture. The bird is one recurring figure in Shimmen's work, as she refers to birds as possessing both fragility and endurance. This duality, explored through the bird's symbolism, is echoed by other dualities in Shimmen's practice, especially those depicted through cultural and religious stories, such as life and death, good and evil.

Shimmen's work is held in numerous regional, state, and university collections across Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Artbank, and the State Library of Victoria. In addition, she has taught in several institutions such as Monash University and RMIT. In 1998 she was awarded the Silk Cut Award for Linocut Prints. Shimmen is represented by Australian Galleries.

Irene Proebsting and Barry Brown

Irene Proebsting and Barry Brown are an artist couple often collaborating through film and photography based in the Boola Boola region of Gippsland. Much of their work takes on an industrialised aesthetic, with underlying themes of social and environmental politics.

Proebsting's practice developed out of an initial interest in painting and photography, studying at the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education and receiving a Diploma in the field. Later, she became involved with the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group and was exposed to Experimental Cinema. The material qualities that could be achieved through camera manipulation became a strong interest for Proebsting, leading her to complete an Advanced Diploma of Multimedia at the Western Melbourne Institute of TAFE several years later.

Proebsting adopts a diaristic approach to filming and re-filming, utilising found footage and montaging with existing imagery in books, magazines, and her own work.

Also sharing an interest in film, Barry Brown's practice stems from experimental sound, investigating the potential of post-reconstruction and manipulation of sound. As an area of interest, he undertook studies in Media Arts at RMIT, specialising in sound.

During his studies, he began testing out Super 8 Film cameras, exploring their capabilities and growing fascination for Experimental Cinema. Brown often uses the visualisations and effects created through film as an abstract 'score', which is then translated into a sonic experience.

In the work Harmonic Ghosts, Proebsting and Brown montage imagery of foliage light and shadows, architectural elements like a spire and stained-glass windows, among other things. The super 8 film has a home-documentary feel, unsteady camera movements, taken both up close and at a distance, which abstracts details to form a new narrative. This dynamic movement also suggests sporadic movements through time and the revisitation of memories that have become fractured through an experience of distorted duration. In this work, the ambiguity is layered with a constant thrumming and whirring sound. The widespread tones within the sound element of the work unfurl as the image shifts. The artists have created the tones using an amplified guitar tuner.

Several works by Proebsting and Brown are held in the Latrobe Regional Gallery collection and have been shown at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne.

Colin Suggett

From an early age, Colin Suggett investigated using materials in inventive ways. His father's interest in photography was passed on through his collection of film and photographic supplies, which would inspire Colin to create his film animations by drawing onto sticky tape. During his schooling years, he made a series of puppets designed with several moving mechanisms.

The artist's interest in art stemming from film and puppetry during his childhood remains in the complexities of his sculptural dioramas, many of which have kinetic parts.  

Colin Suggett's sculptural works address socio-political issues, often criticising society's disregard for the environment.  Other concepts often referenced are materialism, industry, and modern technology.  

Sometimes described as Lilliputian worlds, Suggett's sculptures, such as Beach Specimen, incorporate scenes in response to the modern world at a miniaturised scale. The coastline sample, also illustrating the sedimentary layers of earth beneath, does not contain signs of humanity. Suggett's work is satirical in this way, suggesting an attempt to understand the environment without considering the continuous and often negligent impact that society has had on changing environment and climate conditions. This work also directly referenced South Gippsland and was created during the time of a proposed sewerage outfall to be located near Inverloch. The piece became a vital part of the campaign against the proposal, and was displayed in a local shop window.  

Many of Suggett's works are held at Latrobe Regional Gallery and in private collections. He has also developed several public art commissions, and his work has been shown in various solo and group shows and two retrospectives. In addition, Suggett lectured in sculpture for a decade at the Gippsland School of Art, Churchill, and resides in Venus Bay.

Bill Young

William Young undertook Fine Art and Education studies in South Australia between 1970 and 1976. He became known in Gippsland in the 1980s as a neo-expressionist painter, often utilising primary colours such as Cadmium Yellow and Cerulean Blue, which would be built up in rich layers upon a ground of deep black or brown. 

In Spirit of Morwell, the primary colours over-saturate the landscape, separating the land and the sky. The vivid colours and sweeping, smudging brushstrokes create a heightened reality and imaginative impression of the landscape, evoking both memory and the presence of place. Each panel forms a panoramic view of the horizon with markers of industry - chimneys, factories, clouds of smoke. 

This work of Young's ties into the vision of 50 Years, 50 Artists as an exhibition celebrating the past whilst also looking towards the future of art in Gippsland. The open book at the centre of the work contains painted snapshots of Morwell scenes, a reflection and celebration of the identity of the place. Two clouds on both panels - vanish towards the centre of the horizon as if travelling through with a view to what lies ahead. 

Throughout his career, Young has taught art at Secondary and Tertiary levels in South Australia and Victoria. His work is shown widely in Victorian public and commercial galleries. Young's work is held in the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, Latrobe Regional Gallery and Gippsland Art Gallery.

Rodney Forbes

Rodney Forbes grew up in Williamstown, where his childhood would become filled with life memories in the suburbs and life at sea. For seven years, he was an electronics technician at the Williamstown Naval Dockyard, and his experiences of living and working in this environment became a considerable influence in his work. Evident in his distinct narrative style paintings are references to stories autobiographical yet dreamlike, drawing on the nostalgia of child-like perspectives.

Cartoons and painting were an interest in his youth, long before deciding to undertake a Diploma of Visual Arts at the Gippsland School of Art in 1980. This interest appears through the illustrative style in Forbes work, with intense colours and play with perspective, sometimes associated with the gridded structure of board games.

In Submarine with Goat and Giantess, the submarine's shell is dissolved, revealing an environment organised in its complexity and compartmentalisation. Amongst the details, the goat and giantess are two key figures that provoke a further investigation into the painting. Each element included invites one to imagine living conditions and working in the space Forbes references in this piece.

Although featuring a lively palette and cartoonish style, Forbes also often explores more serious histories in his narrative paintings. His work Death of Angus McMillan is part of a series that aims to increase awareness about the story of The White Woman of Gippsland, revealing the dark history of massacres of the Gunaikurnai people of Gippsland. As the central character of the image, Angus McMillan, the perpetrator of these massacres, and his horse are inverted, depicting the cause of his death. The scene is patterned with sharp tree stumps, referring to clearing a track near Dargo - his final expedition.

Forbes work is held in several regional and state gallery collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Artbank and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and is represented by Australian Galleries. His influence on contemporary Gippsland art extends from his practice and his roles for several years as Director of Gippsland Centre for Art and Design and Switchback Gallery at Monash University, Churchill. Forbes is also active in developing and curating cross-cultural art projects and exhibitions.

Jenny Peterson

Jenny Peterson is a local contemporary artist specialising in printmaking. Living and working in Boolarra, Gippsland, Peterson often uses found objects and flora as a basis of her work to create monoprints, collagraphs, etching and nature prints. 

Peterson was one of many artists in Gippsland who received training through the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education, which is now the same location where she teaches in printmaking at Federation University, Gippsland campus. 

An essential process in Peterson's practice is collecting especially discarded metals from road signage and scraps left behind from industry and construction. The traces of an object become embedded within each abrasion and scratch to the surface. By printing with these scraps, Peterson reclaims each object. In doing so, her work becomes an immediate response to her surroundings and a permanent record containing the memory of her journey with that object and simultaneously the life it had before. 

Interest in textures in found materials like cardboard, as depicted in Beer Box, sparked curiosity in the corrugated iron and the indentations in metal. In contrast to other bodies of work by Peterson that explores the inevitable yet fortuitous markings that accumulate on the surface of a found object, Helmet is a work conceived of much more intentional and imposed markings. Part of a series called Tin Suit, Peterson explores the Australian iconography of corrugated iron and the Ned Kelly story. The use of a deep red coloured ink in the Helmet references rust, which speaks about age, weathering and history. The pigments in the etching also allude to colours found in Australian landscapes, rural and farming land. 

Peterson's work is held in many public galleries across Australia, such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, State Library of Victoria, Gippsland Art Gallery and Latrobe Regional Gallery. In addition, Jenny Peterson is represented by James Makin Gallery Editions, Melbourne.

Owen Rye

Owen Rye is an internationally recognised artist in the ceramics field and has been a leading artist in the contemporary wood-firing movement. Rye completed a PhD in ceramic arts in 1970, which was the first in that field at the time. He taught ceramics in art schools – for over 25 years - first at the Canberra School of Art and then at the Gippsland campus of Monash University in Churchill.

Living and working in Boolarra South, the rural bushland environment provides constant fuel for his process in using a wood-fired anagama kiln. This type of kiln originates from ancient pottery from the 5th century, first used in Korea before Japan and China. The surface appearance of the final work is affected depending on the placement of the ceramic in the kiln. An ash glaze is created wherein some parts, the embers coat the piece.

The variation produced throughout the surface of the work is particularly evident in Vase 7, where the ash deposit creates an encrusted texture, as though having accumulated fossilised remnants of earth. The artist's interest in archaeology becomes an apparent reference in this piece, speaking to historical processes, the evolution and the correlation between lifestyles and human practices over thousands of years. The degree of chance involved with this firing process becomes apparent in Dark Vessel, with the ash deposit creating a gradient of umber to ochre browns.

Rye has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally and curated woodfire survey exhibitions, teaching workshops, and producing writings on ceramics and archaeology throughout his career.

Tony Hanning

Tony Hanning became well established in contemporary Australian glass and was the first of his contemporaries to employ techniques of cameo glass as a key component of his practice. The techniques of cameo glass pieces originate in Ancient Rome but returned in the 19th century, in Europe, America and Britain.

The process involves layers of coloured glass, which are blown or "cased" together. The layers are then carved back, engraved and sandblasted to reveal the colours underneath, drawing similarities to linocut and woodcut printing.

Imagery in Hanning's work is often derived from the Gippsland landscape, from vast vegetated areas of local flora and fauna to his garden. The deep purple in Landscape creates a silhouetted depiction of Australian bushland, using layering of glass to create depth in the monochromatic image. The use of glass allows as a base for these scenes as the layers are sandblasted back, creating a luminous finish.

Other environments appear in Hanning's work, such as urban areas and cityscapes. In Orange Bowl, a blend of suburbia and industrial landscapes is dispersed around the bowl's inner surface. The Cubist perspective makes the composition complex and disorientating, looking down into the vortex of these objects propelled in a continuous quizzical space. Each component – a brick wall, signpost, pipes, windows, portals and blocks of architectural structures – are linked through ladders and staircases, creating a surrealist landscape. 

From 1971 – 1980, Tony Hanning was Director of Lat Valley Arts Centre, Latrobe Regional Gallery. His work is represented in significant Australian and international collections.

Nick Mount

Nick Mount is one of several students who followed in the footsteps of Robin Wallace-Crabbe, coming from Adelaide to Gippsland in 1972, where he lived and worked until 1984. During that time, Mount developed a close relationship with Tony Hanning, with whom he later established Budgeree Glass, the first hot-glass studio in Victoria.

Mount's practice has been influenced by American glass artist Richard Marquis, who came to Australia in the 1970s and demonstrated glassblowing. At this time, Mount was employed as Marquis' assistant.

These unique qualities to glass – its incandescent colour and exchange with light, its brittleness, its lustre and decorative nature – are the essence of Mount's explorations with glass, presented through considered design and bulbous sculptural forms.

Using commonplace objects as a starting point, Mount draws out the beauty and simplicity in these forms. Behind the simplicity in Mount's work is the complexity of the process, capturing a sense of repose, as in Reclining Bobs #SB010113, with the elongated, orbicular forms resting on the cushion. One work from a series of floats, Pink and Grey Fishing Float, is part of an exploration earlier on his practice where Mount sections and reassembled several blown components of different colours to create enclosed forms with precision in technique.

Nick Mount is represented through many private and public collections across the country, including the National Gallery of Australia. Since gaining international recognition as a leading glass artist, his work is also shown frequently throughout Europe, the United States and Japan.

Hedley Potts

With a career in ceramics spanning over 50 years, Hedley Potts is an artist who takes an approach to clay as an expressive material. Through non-functional objects, he explores the potential of colour, texture and form in ceramics, ranging from minuscule pieces, pavements, life-sized figurative pieces and shapes inspired by socio-political narratives.

Potts studied at RMIT School of Art in 1960, where he took an interest in ceramics and the possibilities of clay. Potts arrived in Gippsland in 1972 to take up a position as the Senior Lecturer in Ceramics at what was then Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education. There had been no ceramics programme when he came, and it was under his direction that Gippsland ceramics flourished.

The artist has always been interested in theatre, which is apparent in the characters portrayed in his ceramics. The main protagonist of Gulliver Australis I is depicted on the vessel as a crocodile, being tied up by the Lilliputians. The story of Gulliver's Travels has fascinated Potts since childhood. This work was part of a series that emerged through exploring the political commentary that can be read into the narrative of Australian history.

In 1995, Potts was selected as an artist in residence at Kingston Arts Centre following his sea-change to Bayside in 1994. Since that time, he has continued to work from a Ceramic Co-op studio in Moorabbin.

Julie Adams

Julie Adams has been significant to contemporary art in Gippsland, not only as an artist herself but also through various arts management roles, including five years as Arts Director at Latrobe Regional Gallery. For several years Adams was also Head of Gippsland Centre for Art and Design, Monash University, where she also lectured in painting and drawing, among other tertiary institutions.  

Along with several artists featured in this exhibition, Adam's work was included in the touring exhibition Contemporary Gippsland Artists which toured from 1990 – 1992 throughout Victoria and interstate. Surrendered Secrets, a reticent, mysterious piece, was included in this exhibition – an oil painting illustrating a cloud of smoke emerging from behind two panelled curtains in an overshadowed setting. The viewer is prompted to ask, 'what is concealed behind those curtains?' Or a viewer may ask, 'what is it that is causing the smoke?'. The first response might be a fire, perhaps a perplexing machine or a chemical reaction, but it would not be such a leap to consider supernatural forces or an occult ritual in this painting.  

The history of relics and ruins, performative rites and rituals have been a long-time interest for the artist. Adams travelled for several months around the UK and Europe early in her career, visiting ancient sites including Stonehenge, Newgrange and the standing stones in Carnac. The artist immersed in these environments and locations of archaeological and religious artefacts propelled her work into an exploration of longing to grasp the unknowns of the universe.  

Living and working in Gippsland, the artist's experiences and journeys through the landscape also make their way into her work. These ideas of desire to comprehend the unknown by looking at historical legends and relics are translated to reference the magnificence and diversity of the Gippsland landscapes.

Euan Heng

Euan Heng grew up in Lanarkshire, Scotland, a rural county bordering Glasgow, that drew many similarities to the Latrobe Valley in its industrialised landscape. Heng emigrated to Australia in 1977.

Heng is accomplished in painting, drawing, printmaking and, more recently, has been creating sculpture. He was the Head of the Printmaking Department for 14 years at Monash University, Churchill Campus, during which time he taught many artists in Gippsland. 

Heng's work is characterised by gradual inflections in pigment, working with the flatness of the painting's surface, favouring clean lines and boldly articulated and abstracted shapes. In Jeeralang Still Life and Jeeralang Still Life I, Heng refers to the gas turbine power station and the industry of the Jeeralang as a defining identity of the locality. Combining elements of the power station such as large vents, turbines, and steel supporting structures, Heng depicts the clunky, obtrusive nature of the mechanical factory materials. They are given a gargantuan presence, accenting the steel with red and green hues that highlight the reflective quality of the steel and the hazy glow that it emits. 

Heng's work is represented and exhibited extensively across Australia and Scotland. He has also undertaken several residencies, including a Royal Scottish Academy Residency in 2010 and the Drawing Room Project in 2018 with Deakin University. Niagara Galleries represent him.

Julie Rosewarne Foster

Julie Rosewarne Foster lives in Gippsland, where she has been an important part of the local arts scene both as an artist and through her roles in arts education, including in her position as Education Officer at Latrobe Regional Gallery from 2010 – 2014.

Rosewarne Foster had not always been based in Gippsland. Still, she moved here in 1985 to take up a position at the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education in the education faculty, teaching art education for training primary and secondary school teachers. Like many artists who lived or travelled to the region, she was drawn to the forests, cleared paddocks, rich soils and good rainfall. View to the South is part of a series of pastel drawings that reflect on these landscapes as the artist travelled from place to place. She often made these drawings en plein air, and this work would have been a quick drawing done on-site from her period in Traralgon South.

As a medium, pastel has allowed Rosewarne Foster to capture an impression of the view with both soft and coarse textures across the scene. In the foreground, the pastures are brought into focus in broad green strokes cross-hatched with yellow and orange, while markers of distance further out on the horizon become more blurred. The dusty, chalky quality of pastel illustrates the view with a residue or haze in the air, making visible fresh winds, describing not only what the artist saw but their sense of the place.

Rosewarne Foster has an extensive background in arts education, teaching in Tertiary courses at Churchill and Clayton campuses of Monash University. She has a Master of Arts (Australian Art) and a PhD in Fine Arts, Classic and Archaeology. She continues to contribute to arts education programs delivered to groups of a wide age range and abilities.

Dan Wollmering

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, and arriving in Australia in 1975, Dan Wollmering is a contemporary sculptor. His work usually follows Minimalist traditions and focuses on the essence of abstracted forms. Wollmering uses materials such as bronze, steel and wood in his work and often explores the materiality beyond its usual expectations. Later in his practice, Wollmering became increasingly involved in abstract sculpture and public art, exploring cross-discipline practices between sculpture and architecture.

Wollmering is interested in the creative process informed by material investigation and exploration, involving manipulating and building objects and innovative substances. The sculpture (Breadworks No.2) In Adoration II is an example that shows Wollmering's interest in aesthetic and conceptual qualities explored through unusual materials. At the top of the plinth in a clear Perspex box, a loaf of bread appears to be compressed, forced into an uncomfortable position from the pressure between two thicker pieces of Perspex, screwed in place. Preserved in this contorted position, the hardened outer layer of the bread is hardened and cracked. A third of the way down the plinth, a small organic triangular window reveals a sedimentary deposit of bread pieces. The transference of bread into a material with sculptural possibilities imparts ideas of abjection and decomposition.

In his early career, Wollmering spent some years in the 1980s in Gippsland, lecturing in the Wood/Sculpture department at the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education. Both his practice and art teaching have been important to the development of contemporary sculpture in Gippsland.

Wollmering has completed a Bachelor's degree, an MFA and a PhD in Sculpture and extended media.
Following his art teaching positions in Gippsland, Wollmering taught at Monash University Caulfield Campus as the Sculpture Studio Coordinator. He has exhibited in an extensive number of solo and group exhibitions throughout his career, including the 1987 Australian Sculpture Triennial. He was one of 12 sculptors from 11 countries invited to participate in the Ninth Guilin Yuzi Paradise International Sculpture Symposium in China. He was the recipient of the 2008 Contempora Sculpture Prize.

Ronald Edwards-Pepper

Ronald Edwards-Pepper is an Aboriginal artist of the Gunaikurnai nation who uses painting as a primary way to express his identity and tell the stories of his ancestors.

Edwards-Pepper is based in Morwell, Gippsland, where his grandparents Dolly Mullet & Watson Pepper arrived in the 1960s from Lake Tyers Mission. The histories and stories passed on to Edwards-Pepper through generations have become essential to his life, strongly connecting him to the Gunaikurnai land and people.

Gunaikurnai Dreamtime stories play a significant role in Edward-Pepper's work. For example, in his Boorun and Tuk, Dreamtime of Aboriginal people of Gippsland, the Boorun and Tuk creation story is depicted on a shield. Boorun was a pelican, the first Gunaikurnai man, and Tuk was a musk duck, the first Gunaikurnai woman. In between them, a shield is depicted, representing one of the five Gunaikurnai clans.

Alongside his art practice, Edwards-Pepper is actively involved in educating people about Aboriginal culture, using his paintings to establish connections and to share meaningful stories from the Aboriginal community.

Rosalind Atkins

Rosalind Atkins is an artist specialising in printmaking. Highly skilled in the area, she taught for some time at Monash University Gippsland Campus in the printmaking department, supervising undergraduate and postgraduate students. Atkins works across both intaglio and relief printmaking techniques, including copper engraving, etching, wood engraving and drawing.

The concepts explored within Atkins' practice stem from her interest in the environment, in particular trees. Having grown up in Terang, Victoria, the country's landscape has profoundly impacted her view of the environment, especially concerning industry, consumption of trees, and the effects of clearing and re-landscaping the natural environment. Trees are also often planted to mark territories or to honour and memorialise. In addition, they are markers of sacred sites and hold strong cultural significance to Aboriginal people.

There is a direct relationship between the printmaking process of wood engraving and the ideas the inform Atkins' work. In the print Mantracks, Atkins depicts a landscape of hilly terrain speckled with forest.  Human interference with the landscape is shown through the line which zigzags through sections of trees. This track carved out is our imprint on the land.

She has shown widely both in solo and group exhibitions, both in Australia and overseas. Her career extends over thirty years, and in this time, collaboration with other artists, poets and writers has been important to her practice. Atkins' work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the British Museum, London.

Dr Aunty Eileen Harrison

Gunaikurnai artist and Elder; Dr Aunty Eileen Harrison bears a deep spiritual connection to Country. Harrison's bases her work on the cultural and ceremonial stories of the Gunaikurnai people of Gippsland. In listening to the land, the trees and messages through birds and other animals, her process involves a profoundly personal encounter with the spirits of her ancestors and the presence of her mother and grandmother.

The Den of Nargun is in the Mitchell River National Park, and the history of this place bears significance to the Gunaikurnai people. In Gunaikurnai legend, the Nargun was a creature half-stone and half-human, living in the Dreamtime in a cave behind a waterfall along Woolshed Creek. Stories shared about this creature describe it as fierce and beastly, abducting unvigilant travellers and children who wandered close by. In addition, the Den of Nargun was a spiritual place because it was used as a women's initiation ceremony place, and the legends told played an important role in keeping others away.

In the work Den of Nargun - Spirit Tracks, Harrison depicts figures that appear one with the environment in which they dwell. These figures represent the spirits of her ancestors, looking over the land and all that lives and passes through Den of Nargun, a sacred landscape.

This painting reflects Harrison's feeling of the spirits' presence while walking through the cave and invites others to consider the cultural importance of this land.

Born and raised on the Lake Tyers Church Mission, Harrison and her community fled the Mission on the Gippsland Lakes when she was 13, making homes for themselves in Jacksons Track. In Bulldozing the Houses on Jackson's Track, Harrison depicts the oppressive and painful memory of the bulldozing of their makeshift homes. The white lines in the painting represent the bulldozer tracks, and footprints of people who lived in Jacksons Track are scattered across the landscape, portraying the sense of displacement of the community.

Eileen Harrison has developed a significant career as an artist locally and nationally, having developed commissioned murals and paintings for many institutions, councils, and festivals.

Frank Mesaric

Frank Mesaric grew up in Gippsland, where his parents had immigrated to from Yugoslavia. A significant influence on his practice was his upbringing in a migrant household, and through this, the disparity he experienced in cultural values.

Mesaric undertook a Diploma of Visual Arts from the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education and completed postgraduate studies from the institution in 1989, specialising in painting. He is highly skilled, adopting a solid realist style, yet at the same time being surrealist in the unusual elements he includes in the imagery of his work. For example, in the painting Angel with Lamb, Mesaric depicts a young woman covering the face of a young man sitting cross-legged on the floor. This woman sitting above and behind the man appears to be perched on a stool, however one which is not visible, giving the effect that she is floating. The relationship between the figures feels unsettling, as the man seems to be submissive to the woman smothering his face, conveying expressions of psychological trauma such as alienation and anxiety, which are recurrent themes in Mesaric's practice.

Medical equipment such as oxygen masks and drips are recurring motifs that appear in the artist's work, and in this piece, Mesaric illustrates a drip that transfers blood from a large cut of meat into a stainless-steel bowl. Sanitary white hospital sheets are draped behind the figures and across the floor. There is a strange fetishisation of the unsettling, posed trauma in the image.

Mesaric finds the human form both an interesting and challenging subject to paint and emphasises the flesh and anatomy through light and shadow, dramatising the scene. He aims to paint speculative compositions that are suggestive of various meanings rather than a fixed idea. He has had several solo exhibitions over his career, and his works are currently held in Gippsland Art Gallery and the Latrobe Regional Gallery.

Peter Cole

Peter Cole is an artist working in sculpture, based in Venus Bay, Gippsland, for many years. Originally from Bairnsdale, East Gippsland, the rural Landscape and his experiences associated with the place are woven into the stories that can be read within Cole's work.

When found objects and castaway materials are used in an artwork, the purpose above and the life of the material implicates the concepts explored within the work. Cole's sculptures are assemblages of wood in broken pieces and salvaged offcuts from things that are at the end of their functional journey. Wood, as a material, has a personal significance to Cole, whose father was a boat builder.  

The sculpture Fire, shown in the touring exhibition Contemporary Gippsland Artists (1990 – 1992), is representative of Cole's fusion of forms. Often incorporating elements of birds, animal and human figures, Cole creates hybrids that do not reference one concept but are left open to the viewer. In his practice, the totemic stylisation expresses Cole's reaction to oppression in political, social and personal contexts. This perspective could be interpreted in Fire through the overall aggressive shape of the work and the collage of imagery such as a plane, gun, shark, or animal of prey.  

Cole's work has stylistic associations to the art of other cultures, such as that of Mexico and South America, which have been an influence through the extensive travel he has done for research and source material.  

Cole studied at the Prahran College of Advanced Education. He taught in both Secondary and Tertiary institutions throughout his career, including in the sculpture department at the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education from 1978 – 1982. Cole's work is held in collections both in Australia and internationally.  

Geoffrey Dupree

Geoffrey Dupree was born in England and came to live in Australia with his family at a young age. They settled in Newborough North. Dupree studied art at the Morwell Technical School under Richard Bishop, who established the Diploma of Art course there. During the 1970s, Dupree returned to London, where he studied Fine Arts specialising in painting. When arriving back in Melbourne, Dupree held his first solo show with Australian Galleries in 1979.

The work Waterloo Road has particular local significance, depicting the rural-urban landscape. Featuring Quigley's Garage in Trafalgar, a familiar roadside marker, Dupree paints a desolate, unsettling town scene. Details that would perhaps often be overlooked, such as the Quigley branding, the petrol bowsers, the streetlight, and rail crossing signals, are articulated through the clean, sharp lines and monochromatic contrast. Through this contrast, Dupree adds drama and emphasises the architecture's geometry, vertical and horizontal lines. The banal is brought to the fore, capturing the building as a monument and portrait of place.

Dupree has been an important figure in contemporary drawing practices for many artists that have emerged through the Gippsland art school. He has taught in tertiary institutions throughout his career and continues to facilitate drawing classes in studios around Victoria. Dupree's work is held in the National Gallery of Victoria, Artbank. He currently lives and works in Melbourne.

Juli Haas

Juli Haas was a student of Euan Heng's when she studied Visual Arts at the Monash University Churchill campus. Haas completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1989, and a Graduate Diploma of Arts in 1990 and a Masters of Arts (Research) in 1995 as a mature age student and mother of three. Her experiences as a mother influenced the narratives woven within her work, as Haas took a particular interest in the relationships between everyday people.

The depictions of the figures in her work emphasised features like caricatures, and the actions of the subjects are highlighted through vivid contrasting colours and outlines. Haas did this to bring attention to the interactions between the characters. However, as in By the banks of her own lagoon, the subjects depicted do not interact with one another but are instead wrapped up within their own lives and the calamities that play out within the image. The humorous yet sinister quality of Haas's work is reminiscent of puppetry and theatrical dramas. The spooky undertone of the work reflects the dark side of the human psyche and the self-obsession of society.

Haas had produced many special commissions both within the state and nationally and received several awards throughout her career. In 1995 she won the Sir John Sulman Prize with By the banks of her own lagoon.

As well as Latrobe Regional Gallery, Haas' works are held in several public collections, including Geelong Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery, Art Gallery of South Australia, National Portrait Gallery, and many other regional and state galleries in Australia.

Kevin Mortensen

Whist Kevin Mortensen was born and raised in the Melbourne suburbs. However, he always had a meaningful connection to Gippsland - a place he considered a sanctuary surrounded by the natural environment. His connection to the area was established through family ties to the region, and since 1985 he has lived and work in Venus Bay.  

Mortensen's practice works across various media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and performance.  Mortensen has returned, again and again, to themes of the ocean, landscape and animal life, often time – birds. The motif of the birdman recurs in much of Mortensen's practice. This interest has grown out of partaking in the Danish ritual known as fugleskyding (which translates to "bird shooting" in English)since childhood. Over time, Mortensen's Danish heritage has become an increasingly important aspect of his practice. 

The eclectic sculpture, 2 ½ with pike, contains the bird motif, nesting on top of the zigzagged platform. The beak extending out to the left is like an ibis – a bird common to the artist's home's wetlands. The ibis is also a motif of ancient Egypt and was sacred to the god Thoth, the god of equilibrium. By this reading, notions of spirituality and balance are delivered through the forms and composition of Mortensen's work.  

During the 1970s and 80s, Mortensen lectured in art at RMIT. During this time, his work was featured in the multiple Mildura Sculpture Triennials and the Biennale of Sydney. In this period, he became an established figure in Australian art, representing Australia in the 1980 Venice Biennale alongside Tony Coleing and Mike Parr and exhibiting in 1981, 1984 and 1989 Australian Sculpture Triennial.

Caroline Durre

A contemporary Australian artist specialising in drawing and painting, Caroline Durre creates works of highly ornamental patterns derived from European architecture, landscaping and richly adorned fabrics. She often works at a large scale, creating visually puzzling and exciting paintings. The geometric and optical style of her work plays with perspective and combines both organic and architectural motifs.

Before living in Melbourne, Durre spent some time living and working in Gippsland. She taught at the Gippsland School of Art in 1992 and 1993, where she also completed a Masters of Arts in 1996. Preceding her bold optical paintings exploring decorative design and dimensionality, abstract patterning and perspective were approached differently. Like many artists in Gippsland, the industry of the Latrobe Valley was a point of response in her practice.

Durre's drawings of this time draw on the compelling scale and complexities of the factories, in particular the Yallourn Power Station and the APM Maryvale Mill. In Untitled (1990), the entanglement of pipes, ramps, platforms, machinery with the structures of the factories is depicted as a bewildering dreamscape to one who is not familiar with the internal framework of these stations. Like the clouds that sit unusually low in the valley, cloud-like forms drift through the centre of the image, dividing it into two. Mirroring and symmetry, used in the artist's current practice, can be observed in some sections of this drawing. In finding the symmetries, the differences and details become further pronounced, drawing the viewer into the maze of the industry ecosystem.

Caroline Durre has also been a lecturer in printmaking at Monash University's Faculty of Art & Design, where she has also supervised Masters and PhD degree students. Durre's work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales and other states, regional, corporate and private collections.

Clive Murray-White

Clive Murray-White was born in 1946 in England and emigrated to Australia in 1959. He was a colleague of Euan Heng at the Gippsland School of Art, having joined the teaching staff in 1983 where he was the Head of Sculpture.

Early in his practice, Murray-White created work with welded and cast metal objects based on found objects. In the 1970s, he explored 'post object art with smoke sculptures. His work Drawing for - Adelaide Festival smoke display is one such example that shows how he thought about smoke as a medium within the sculpture. Over the photograph, the artist uses a fibre-tipped pen and wax crayon to create a diagrammatic drawing exploring the potential to manipulate the smoke.

In the 1980s, Murray-White transitioned to marble sculpting, finding importance in the material as something that comes directly from the ground we live on and a record of space and time. The artist does not use Italian marble, as locally sourced materials are integral to his practice.

The work Minerva is named after the Etruscan goddess, who in Roman mythology is the goddess of wisdom, war, and art, among other things. Gods/goddesses as all-knowing beings are a concept visited in Murray-Whites work, with heads on their pedestals symbolic of intelligence beyond the body. The artist has described his marble head sculptures as 'implying that the body has eroded'. The work is a contemplation of existence.

Murray-White has also been an essential artist to the Gippsland arts community because of the Cowwarr Arts Space, which he established with Carolyn Crossley. Murray-White has been exhibiting since 1965 and has held an extensive number of solo shows. He has also created many major commissions and has been invited to exhibit in many national exhibitions such as Sydney Biennales and Australian Sculpture Triennials. In addition, his work is held in several notable state collections, including the Australian National Gallery, The National Gallery of Victoria, The Australian Parliament House and many regional and public collections across Australia.

Robin Wallace-Crabbe

Robin Wallace-Crabbe has been an important figure in the Australian art scene for over 50 years. Coming from the South Australian School of Art in Adelaide, Wallace-Crabbe came to Churchill, Gippsland, where he was part of the initial teaching staff at the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education. In this respect, he has been a key figure in the development of Gippsland art.

Highly skilled as a printmaker and in painting, Wallace-Crabbe is also an established art critic, curator, cartoonist, designer and illustrator. He has not established a fixed style throughout his career but has instead explored various genres from abstraction to realism, diverse concepts, and experimented with mediums such as pastel drawings, paintings, and sculpture.  

However, a commonality throughout much of Wallace-Crabbe's practice is the autobiographic aspect, often including human subjects in many of his works. These etchings, Daughter and Mother #8 and Daughter and Mother #20, are a clear example of familiar domestic scenes that have a personal value to the artist and connect to the viewer's personal experiences. Captured as freely drawn line drawings, the etchings are sentimental snapshots that observe moments of interaction in the mother-daughter relationship. Whilst we can presume that these figures are to Wallace-Crabbe, their identity is undefined by the loosely composed lines, allowing the viewer to place themselves within the picture.

Robin Wallace-Crabbe has had an extensive number of solo shows throughout Australia and has also been part of many international exhibitions, including the International Print Biennale and the International Drawing Biennale. He is also an author under different pseudonyms, including Robert Wallace and Hartmann Wallis, of which he has written novels, essays and poems. He now resides in Braidwood in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales.

Janina Green

Janina Green is a contemporary photographic artist born in Essen, Germany, in 1944. As a European immigrant, she arrived in Australia in 1949 with her family and grew up in Yallourn North. Whilst she is now based in Melbourne, Green's childhood in Gippsland brings experiences that are integral to her practice.  

Initially with a background in printmaking, Green took up photography in the 1980s, developing an interest in the area when beginning her career in art teaching. Green was drawn not only to the processes of photography but the conceptual qualities, exploring notions of perspective as a woman. Green has explored some themes over her practice of more than 30 years, including motherhood, gender politics and theory, and domesticity.

Returning to Gippsland to recall her childhood, Green created the Plantation series. In this body of work, Green took many photographs around the Latrobe Vallery pine forest plantations – places which she explored in her youth. The work Untitled (1996) is from this series of black and white silver gelatin photographs, which were printed and coloured by hand using photographic dyes. A dirt track in the bottom right of this work leads to a factory in the distance beyond the pines. Green is not only commenting on the environment and industrial and technological impact. With the plantation being an unnatural environment, there is a sense of unease and darkness in the artwork through the looming presence of the pines. It is a representation not of the landscape but of a psychological space. However, the image is evocative of memory, one that is foreboding of utilitarianism and control of the constructed landscape.

Green's work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia and State Library of Victoria, and numerous regional galleries. She is represented by M.33, Melbourne.

Neale Stratford

Neale Stratford is an artist based in Churchill, Gippsland, who draws on his experience living with Asperger's Syndrome to inform the concepts explored in his work.

Stratford has been interested in toys from a young age, particularly figurines of pop culture and science fiction characters. These characters are posed to create dioramas that reference compositional styles and dark themes used in historical artworks, such as Goya and Caravaggio. Whilst his work can be read as satirical, it is mainly introspective and psychological. Using this constructed fantasy space, the artist explores scenarios derived from the imagination, analysing deep and often disturbing thoughts within the human psyche.

Having experienced the limitations of communication in the realm of words, Stratford finds art to be an escape and method of expression. Stratford draws on his association with the figurines he uses, as in Being comforted by death. In the reality that he creates within the image, he perceives himself as embodying the character's persona. In doing so, Stratford investigates ideas of identity, internal and external perception and emotive memory.

Neale Stratford has obtained a Masters in Visual Arts in 2009 and completed a Master of Fine Art in 2014 from Monash University. He has participated in several group shows and multiple solo shows across Victoria.

Rodney Scherer

Rodney Scherer came to Gippsland from Canberra, where he studied at the Canberra School of Art.
He is a significant artist of the Gippsland region, who has also had various arts management, education and curatorial roles throughout his career, including Director of Latrobe Regional Gallery from 1997 – 2003. In addition, he was Co-curator of the first national travelling exhibition of regional artists, Contemporary Artists Gippsland, which toured from 1990-1992.

Scherer works across a range of mediums, including painting, printmaking, sculpture. Both drawings shown in 50 Years, 50 Artists have an electric quality to the approach Sherer has taken in depicting the landscapes. A yellow meandering path separates the landscape into large blocks and juxtaposes the patches of colour rendered with straight lines. The track maintains its vivid glow into the distance, becoming the leading line of the work, and continues in the imagination over the other side.

Similarly, in Electro Magnetic Landscape, the artist has also used high key colours which speckle the scene. One might imagine fireworks over the water, with the aftermath of the explosion raining down, or a hazardous field of electricity supercharging currents that manifest as sparks radiating. Reminiscent of fauvist representations, Scherer reimagines the landscape in intense colours.

Scherer's recent work explores sculptural forms created through found objects. His roles within the Gippsland arts scene extend to Founding Chairperson of Art Resource Collective (arc Yinnar) and printmaking technician at the Gippsland Institute of Visual Arts 1979 – 1981.

Scherer's work is held in Latrobe Regional Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery, and various private collections nationally and internationally.

Anthea Williams

Gippsland-based artist Anthea Williams has been a key figure in the local arts community for many years through her involvement with ARC Yinnar, as a technician at Latrobe Regional Gallery for some time and her positions lecturing in Visual Arts at Federation University, Churchill. Williams employs various processes in her sculptural practice, including working from moulds, welding metals and assemblages of multiple materials.

Williams has long been interested in the space between two and three-dimensionality. Her work Cyclone Crossing is an example from a body of work of welded steel, open-form sculptures, painted in some sections. The use of industrial steel provides a connection to the industry of Latrobe Valley. It has been manipulated into a composition much like an abstract gestural drawing but drawn in space. This multi-dimensional expression celebrates and aestheticises industrial material through textural markings and abstract forms, capturing a moment between fluidity and stasis.

The intersection of found objects and made forms also informs Anthea's practice, as in her series of shattered ceramics. These works are carefully assembled from the artist's ceramic rejections and found studio objects. The artworks in this series explore ideas around the real and perceived concepts of personal artistic failure and fragility. All the works can be read as standing or reclining figures, with titles paying homage to cubism. Cubist collage is further explored by the dissection of mass and planes all tenuously glued together.

Williams has been the recipient of prestigious awards throughout her career, including the Pollock-Krassner Foundation Grant in 2000 and the 2005 SOHO-Chelsea Internation Art Competition in New York. In addition, she has had numerous solo and group exhibitions across Victoria and beyond. Residing in Boolara, Gippsland, Williams makes artworks with mundane, recyclable and discarded objects, which she transforms and heightens into sculptures and installations.

Sue Fraser

Sue Fraser is a Gippsland-based contemporary artist specialising in printmaking, working primarily in the mediums of linocuts and etchings. She has been printing for over 25 years and is drawn to the visual qualities produced through printmaking and an intensive yet rewarding process.

Fraser works in black and white, using the contract to emphasise line, detail and negative space. Her work often draws on imagery associated with fairy tales and childhood fables. The narratives within Fraser's work stem from stories that she has heard or seen, which evolve into pictorial myths by playing with the scale and proportions of the figure and landscape or realm they occupy within the image.

Often with the protagonist of her narratives is a woman, as in Travellin' Light which depicts a female figure who is set out on a journey, suggesting autobiographic references. The artist imagines herself within the narrative and invites the viewer to place themselves in the picture, using an intimate scale where one peers into the story. The curved landscape and star-laden sky illustrate an imaginative scene that feels familiar in its simplicity and nostalgia of youthful dreams.

Fraser was the recipient of the 19th Fremantle Print Awards in 1994 and the 2008 Silk Cut Award for linocut prints. Her work is held in various public collections, including Latrobe Regional Gallery and Gippsland Art Gallery, and various private collections. In addition, her work has been selected for many major print exhibitions within Australia.

Pezaloom

Pezaloom is an artist whose practice is heavily informed by the Gippsland landscape and his experience living with early-onset Parkinson's disease. Pezaloom works in the photographic field, capturing the aesthetic of the Latrobe Valley, Gippsland, in which he has spent most of his life. He sees the Latrobe Valley as an essential part of his identity. He uses the aesthetic of this industrial centre as a metaphor for the tension he experiences within his body through his disease. The breakdown of the 'nerve system of the state', Pezaloom likens the dissolution of the industry to the simultaneous progression of Parkinson's disease that impedes his cognitive function.

Often looking to desolate, overlooked areas around Gippsland, such as domesticated suburbia and the remains of structures that served as monuments or markers of a community. These landscapes are desolate not because they are barren but because they are uninhabited, retaining only the traces and memories of a stranger. Pezaloom's series' lifeboats on land' documents a series of run-down caravans that once served as a home. Caravans, designed to be to move around, are shown in this series as stagnant and fixed. The unkempt nature of the caravans and surrounds records a dissipation of life and the human condition. These 'life boats' which once provided shelter no longer serve their purpose but are a reminder of the temporality of all life forms.

Pezaloom is an active member of the Gippsland arts scene and is also part of the artist collective Owls of Nebraska. He has had many solo exhibitions across Victoria, including Small Town Fetish at Latrobe Regional Gallery in 2020. Pezaloom's work is held in the State Library Victoria, The Minister for the Arts of Victoria collection, Latrobe Regional Gallery, and several private collections in Australia.

Christopher Coventry

Christopher Coventry is a well-established artist of his generation. Born in Adelaide in 1944, he studied at the South Australian School of Art. He spent time in Gippsland teaching at the art school during the same time as Euan Heng, supervising both Undergraduate and Masters students.

Coventry's practice has been influenced by the new ideologies and movements explored through the 1960s in response to the global impact of the Cold War. Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field painting was some art movements born out of this time, and ideas from each of these may be found in Coventry's work.

Whilst Coventry's work may be more closely associated with abstraction, his earlier work from his time in Gippsland often references the history and themes of the local area, thereby creating a narrative in the work.

In Nolan's Fired, the painting is separated into blocks of colour, and the verticality of the tree trunks create focal points and pattern. Further to the lone trees that extend beyond the painting, branches and twigs in singular brushstrokes mark the forest floor, suggesting a deforested landscape. Through this depiction, Coventry references the local logging industry of Gippsland, which began back in 1882 in Orbost.

Coventry lives and works in Melbourne. He has shown in exhibitions around Australia since 1969 in both regional and state galleries.

Jennifer Mullet

Jennifer Mullet is an Aboriginal artist who explores symbolism used in paintings, artifacts and storytelling of the Gunaikurnai, Bidawal and Ngarigo (Monaro) people. These are her tribes and homeland areas. She is the daughter of Uncle Albert Mullett, who is a highly respected Elder of the Gunaikurnai/Monaro people. Her mother, Rachel Mullett, is a painter.  

Growing up, Mullett spends most of her childhood in the forests of Bidawal and far New South Wales and as a teenager in Gunaikurnai country. Her work is a re-connection to personal memories and experiences and a representation of identity.

The symbols use Mullett uses in her work diverts from those that are more commonly used, such as those in Symbols of the Gunai Woman and Bird I and Moon.The artist says the construction of these symbols "embody cultural essentialism. They are embodied through a series of changes by the interlocking of external and internal worlds." These symbols are a contemporary translation of stories of the land, waters, and animals with an internal and spiritual lens. Mullett challenges the assumptions associated with Aboriginal art having prescriptive qualities in appearance.

As well as printmaking, Jennifer Mullett also works in ceramics, installation, painting and drawing. Her work is held in several regional and states public galleries and museums, including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and Koorie Heritage Trust, Melbourne.

Susan Purdy

Living and working in the Strzelecki Ranges, Gippsland, Susan Purdy finds constant inspiration from the diversity and solitude of her surrounding environment. Purdy works predominantly in the photographic medium of photograms and cyanotypes, bringing these early photographic practices into a contemporary context.

Purdy often uses flora and fauna found in the environment around her. The subject matter speaks not only to ideas about the landscape but her immersion in space. This mode of perception has an introspective quality. The interconnectedness of living things is an evident theme. Rather than referencing the abyss or dark matter, Purdy likens the deep black backgrounds on which the images appear as a void and meditative space to explore universal microcosms.

In Flip and Wreath, the artist used a projection of light through the glass objects to bridge the three-dimensional in a two-dimensional plane. While possessing ghostly, ethereal silhouettes, the luminescent clouds and gradients of light passing through maintains the depth of these objects.

These works were part of a new direction in the artist's practice, moving away from the landscape and exploring objects. Yet, the refractions of light and organic shapes and textures mimic those found in the natural environment. In addition, Purdy reveals the unseen fluidity not customarily associated with the brittle, fragile material of glass.

Susan Purdy has also been important to Gippsland art, having worked for many years as Lecturer in Photography at the Monash University Churchill Campus. Purdy has had several other roles as an educator in her field throughout her career. Her work is held in public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Latrobe Regional Gallery, Gippsland Art Gallery and private collections.

Lisa Kennedy

Lisa Kennedy was born in Melbourne and grew up close to the Maribyrnong River. She is a descendant of the Trawlwoolway People on the northeast coast of Tasmania. She is currently based near the coast of South Gippsland. Through her experience living near a natural river environment, Kennedy developed a deep connection to Wurundjeri country, which she draws on in her work. The gradual restoration and reclamation of the environment are also important themes embedded in her work.

Kennedy is an experienced artist in painting, printmaking and mixed media illustration, having completed a Diploma of Visual Arts from East Gippsland TAFE and a Graduate Diploma of Visual Art in 2002 from the Victorian Collee of the Arts, Melbourne.

Murrambakannya Niripa (Old Woman Spirit of Salt Water) illustrates an Aboriginal spiritual figure emerging from the sea. However, the spirit is one with the ocean and the marine animals and appears to be watching overall. The sea has vital spiritual and cultural importance to Aboriginal People, and they view the land and sea as interconnected Country. For the Aborigines of lutruwita (Tasmania), the sea holds significance as they have always been seafarers and builders of seafaring vessels. This is referenced by Kennedy's inclusion of a canoe in this painting.

Kennedy's etchings are held in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, which she produced in 1999 while at the Australian Print Workshop, Fitzroy. She has participated in many exhibitions and, in 2005, was short-listed for the Deadly Art Award of the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards. Recent work includes illustrations for picture books' Welcome to Country' and 'Wilam', which are collaborative with Wurundjuri Elder Aunty Joy Murphy, who authored the books. Like her art, Kennedy's illustrations for these books are derived from the songs and stories of ancestors her personal connection to the land, water, and animals in Country.

Glen Clarke

Born in Gippsland in 1954, Glen Clarke is an artist working with collage, painting and sculpture, often exploring an intersection between these fields. In 1976 he completed a Diploma of Art & Design at the Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education now known as Federation University Gippsland campus.

Latrobe Regional Gallery acquired some works from Clarke following the completion of his diploma, which share diagrammatic qualities, such as in the work Heavenly delights over the valley. A clear connection to diagrams and mapping in his work is graph paper and a literal copy of a map of the Latrobe Valley. Across the top of the work, a decoratively dashed line on tissue acts as an abstract form of measurement, perhaps for distance or weather, a timeline, or multiple factors. Some colours used across this floating line appear in some parts over the map, shading areas in blue pencils or spotting with ink. The artist's use of graph paper layered on the background above the map is place on a diagonal, alluding to orientation or the Latrobe Valley atmosphere. An atomised spray of ink appears in this section, like a mist of rainfall running down into the creeks.

Clarke's diagrammatic collages, drawings and paintings are also a precursor to the sculptural explorations of his practice, as the overlay of materials become a flattened reference of three-dimensional space. The intersection of sculpture and painting is explored in the artwork Missing you, which comprises three chairs of different sizes that float on the wall. When this artwork was made, the artist had moved to Tasmania to undertake a Masters of Fine Art at the Tasmanian School of Art; Hobart and his wife and daughter concurrently travelled overseas. These chairs, symbolic of domestic family life, are autobiographical of Clarke's feeling of displacement and disconnection from family, as the chairs above appear to be departing from the ground.

Clarke has developed his interest in political narratives around war and the exchanges of profit and loss within this context. His work is held in collections throughout Australia, including the Australian War Memorial and National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Clarke's work is also held in collections in the Asia-Pacific, having done extensive travel and research throughout the region to inform his work.

Dean Smith

Dean Smith is a multidisciplinary artist specialising in the field of ceramics. He was born in Brisbane, Queensland, but grew up in New Zealand, connecting to his Māori ancestry through his father. Smith is now based in Morwell, where he lives and works. Smith's work links ideas of the natural and industrial world, and the Latrobe Valley landscape provides elements of inspiration from both these worlds. This place offers a foundation for further exploration into the environment.

In 2018 Smith undertook a residency in Denmark, creating a body of work that continued his themes, including fragility and impermanent environments. He was drawn to the chalky white cliffs of Møns Klint and the fragility of the environment, subject to erosion by wind and sea. Much of Denmark is a vulnerable lowland, and these cliffs are among the highest points in Denmark, reaching heights of 143 metres. Further, through some strange physics involving the gravitational fields of ice sheets, Scandinavian countries are more affected by Antarctic ice loss than is Australia.

Smith's research and time spent in this environment underpin the visual and conceptual elements of his works Crystal Nights and Sea Mountain. These ceramic forms connect fragile sites at opposite ends of the Earth and speak to the tenuous existence of nature as we know it. Smith conveys the delicate and intangible aspects of these landscapes and their silent conversations using iridescent pigments on the surface.

Dean Smith has exhibited in many significant exhibitions both nationally and internationally with his ceramic work and has received a number of prestigious international awards, including Taiwan Ceramics Biennale (Silver Prize, 2012), 8th Cheongju International Craft Competition, South Korea (Special Citation, 2013), Clunes National Ceramic Award (Winner, 2013) and Vase Finder International 9th Annual Exhibition, USA (Winner, 2014). He is represented by Alcaston Gallery, Melbourne.

Kim McDonald

Kim McDonald is based in South Gippsland, living and working in a small coastal town – an environment that strongly resonates with the concepts explored in her work. She has a background in printmaking, having completed studies at Chisholm Institute and the Victorian College of the Arts.

Concepts around the landscape and the body are critical ideas in McDonald's work, often expressing the interconnectedness between one and the other. In addition, her work renders visible the unseen forces such as psychological states and pressure systems that can affect our minds and bodies.

McDonald associates the heightened anxiety that comes from confronting concerns for the planet's future with deep submersion in water. She conveys this feeling of drowning in relentless angst concerning environmental issues of rising sea levels. The artist describes the manifestation of these psychological states as 'subliminal seascapes, submerged topography, shifting forms, transient spaces, ephemeral water, energy and mass, light, shimmer and intangible liquid landscapes.' The works Deep and Drift are monotype prints from the recent series submerge. McDonald explored both monotype and drypoint printing processes to voice her awareness of the human impact on natural environments.

Like gravity and inertia working opposition to create tidal waves, the works appear as opposites to each other, revealing a positive or negative impression that expands from the centre. The process is essential to the artist's work, from applying the ink to the surface of the plate to using the pressure of the body to draw. They are a biographical trace that translates internal expression to the external. The impression is like a release of breath that fogs up a window and then dissolves, consumed by the atmosphere. The relationship between the body and the environment is reinstated by the similarities in the unpredictability of McDonald's printing process and the Earth's natural forces that impact terrestrial and oceanic environments.

Earlier this year, McDonald has undertaken a printmaking residency at The Baldessin Press and Studio in Melbourne and an Artists in Spaces residency in Leongatha. She has also completed residencies locally and internationally and regularly exhibits in solo and group exhibitions across Victoria. Kim McDonald is also in the artist collective Owls of Nebraska.

Patrice Muthaymiles Mahoney

Patrice Muthaymiles Mahoney OAM is an Aboriginal Australian artist of the Nganyaywana language group of the Anewain Nation in Armidale, New South Wales. Mahoney works across printmaking, sculpture, weaving, drawing and painting, taking a multidisciplinary approach to sharing knowledge from an Aboriginal perspective and deepening her connection to her multicultural background. Mahoney has been back in Victoria for most of her career, where she has established a strong relationship with the Bass Coast community. She is also an experienced leader in educating on cultural awareness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Place, country, environment, and family history profoundly influence the artist's practice, employing symbolism and metaphor throughout her compositions. In the work Jobs, Policy and LOST, Mahoney use text, colour and Aboriginal symbolism embedded in the work to express her frustration for the injustice to the traditional owners of Nganyaywana country, her ancestors. Many people of this country were taken away and killed to warn others not to enter the land, which would be used for farming. Each word carries significance in the political context of the work. The term 'Policy' refers to the White Australia Policy, 'Lost' representing the hundreds of lost family members, and 'Jobs' interrogates our employment systems and why Aboriginal people can only find employment through Aboriginal positions and policies.

Further to this, Mahoney has included the number 3, which directly symbolises her siblings, a suggestion of the future, while black is used to denote family history. The red ink has been violently splattered to allude to bloodshed, and the blue pigment that washes across the work and obscures details is represented secrets.

In 2014, Mahoney received the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards Federation University Acquisitive Award for this work. Since 2005 she had shown in many solo shows in Victoria and many group exhibitions in Victoria and interstate. As well as her art practice, Mahoney has also been involved with several group projects for children's books and publications.

Jeremy Kasper

Jeremy Kasper is an emerging Gippsland artist based in Sale, interested in skate culture and street art. These areas of influence produce an aesthetic in his work in several ways, including choice of medium, fluid and gestural mark marking and often working at a large scale.

Kasper's practice is highly explorative in his abstract compositions, using the line as a form of expression strongly tied to emotion and memory. For Kasper, the line is both a metaphor and a bridge to the subconscious. In accessing these memories and emotions, markings of the line become both an automatic and impulsive process.

In Ramblings of a Mad Man, Kasper combines aerosol paint, graphite and acrylic to achieve different qualities in lines. Whilst chaotic, the markings are also intentional and communicative of an emotional language. Utilising the whole canvas, the graphite has a much more abrasive texture and records moments of tension. The line is painted with aerosol forms and opaque clouds, pronouncing the sinister undertone of the work.

Kasper has been the Dick Bishop Memorial Prize recipient, exhibiting at Latrobe Regional Gallery in 2019, and received the Latrobe Regional Gallery Emerging Artist Award for 2020, exhibited at arc Yinnar. He has also recently shown at Briagolong Art Gallery. In 2019 he completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Federation University, Churchill. Since 2014 Kasper has been commissioned for murals on public and private residences across Gippsland. Kasper has also led the Reclaim Our Lanes Project in Wellington Shire, producing several murals that replaced graffiti with art and connected the community with cultural history.

Josephine Jakobi

Josephine Jakobi is an artist whose practice is centred on ecology and life cycles. She is based in far Bungalook, at the edge of the Colquhoun forest near Lakes Entrance. Jakobi has a deep connection to the place, with generations of the family having lived in the area since the 1890s. Her work is an immersive process – immersing herself in the landscape and the material exploration of the work.

Jakobi has a multidisciplinary practice, often taking a mixed media approach to her work, which crosses between scientific observation and art. Elements and traces of the landscape appear in her work, creating synchronicity between material and the environment. The Lake Tyers estuary is a constant in her art, capturing details of the flora and life forms that occupy the environment. Her works like Estuary are multi-layered, combining ink, detailed line drawing, printing and stitching. Each part is carefully intertwined, mapping out the complexity of the ecosystem. The artist's use of stitching not only echoes and adds depth to the pattern in her practice, but the domesticity of the material references her care for the environment.

Like Estuary, the work Fringe Dwellers contains expressive and direct records of the estuarine ecology and the intrinsic cycles of life and death. A stray leaf, dried and decaying, has been delicately sewn into the work with silk. The straight lines drawn out of the leaf with the thread make connections to other forms in the artwork, spilling out, expanding and rooted in one another.

Jakobi has completed formal training through a Bachelor degree specialising in sculpture and a Masters of Visual Arts in 2010 from Monash University. In addition, she has undertaken several residencies and community-facing projects, including a residency at FLOAT, Lake Tyers in 2017 and exhibiting a solo show at East Gippsland Art Gallery and Gippsland Art Gallery in the same year.