2024 Exhibitions
Georgia Spain
Why not, what if, could it be?
Gallery 1
Images:
Georgia Spain
The Sleeve 2024
167 x 50 x 50 cm
acrylic and oil paint, cotton and polyester
fabric, stockings, stuffing, thread, canvas,
ceramic, glove, cardboard, steel
Georgia Spain
A Stammer in the Speech 2024
oil on linen
198 × 183cm
Peter Atkins
Built Form
Gallery 2
Built Form is a love letter to my adoptive home town of Melbourne, in particular the gloriously manic Sydney Road, an area we’ve lived in now for 25 years.
Carpark Column, Melbourne 2024, is a miniature replica of the Y-shaped concrete pillars supporting Peter McIntyre’s architecturally significant 1960s Parkade Carpark, which can be seen – in fact, almost touched – from the windows of Gallery 2.
Image: Peter Atkins, Carpark Column, Melbourne 2024
acrylic on salvaged plywood, 34 x 16 x 17 cm, edition of 3
Universal Mind
Gallery 1
Collaboration seems to come naturally to Tim Johnson, whose interest in exploring connections between spiritual disciplines and the material world brings with it an openness to many approaches.
Andrew Stephens
art guide AUSTRALIA, JULY/AUGUST 2024
Image: Tim Johnson with Paul Rhodes, Revelation 2024
acrylic on canvas, 103 x 142 cm
Christopher Langton
AFTERGLOW
Gallery 1
AFTERGLOW
I have always been interested in biology – cellular and bulbous forms and plants, especially flowers. In this new body of work, I am returning to the flower-form in continuing my lifelong exploration of magnifying things to the point of monstrosity. It follows from my previous bodies of works, ‘Colony’ and then ‘Colonies’ but unlike them, the forms here are no longer microbes from a hidden world brought to light.
‘AFTERGLOW’ implies a lasting effect, a continuation of a kind of light, positive energy, or pleasant feeling after the triggering event or initial stimulus has passed. Here, the event has ended, and the species that survived are settling down and settling in. The bulbous forms are a gathering of ambiguous flowering bodies with giant sexual reproductive organs like ovaries, pistils, and stamens that look like swollen, sexually aroused, blood-filled organs. They have protrusions to store food and water for nourishment, growth, and use during leaner times. They are evolving and adapting to continue to thrive.
I have always been drawn to bright and bold colours in making works. And flowers have evolved vivid colours to attract pollinators and seed dispersers that aid the plant’s reproductive success. So, the works here are colourful and playful. And yet they look otherworldly and unknown. I am thinking about adaptation to an unknown future given today’s context. ‘AFTERGLOW’ is my take on apocalyptic sci-fi works like ‘The Day of the Triffids’.
— Christopher Langton, 2024
Image: Gymnoluvr 2024, bio-based polymer, epoxy resin, glass fibre and acrylic paint
120 x 85 x 21 cm. Photograph by Kayzar.
Raymond Tan
A piece of ...
Gallery 2
RAYMOND TAN
A piece of…
Breaking away from the conventional notion of cakes as purely edible treats, this exhibition pushes the boundaries of creativity and challenges the traditional definition of sculpture. Displaying daring cakes designed not to be devoured but to be viewed (and collected) as magical, and innovative works of art.
Raymond Tan’s story begins in Selangor, where he spent his formative years before relocating to Australia in 2006 to pursue higher education.
While completing a Master’s degree in Accounting, Tan discovered baking as a creative outlet.
His inventive bakes, including whimsical cake pops, intricately decorated fortune cookies, and stunning celebration cakes, quickly gained attention on Instagram.
Tan’s cake pops, featuring designs such as cacti, drippy watermelon, iconic landmarks and figures such as Anna Wintour and Karl Lagerfeld, became an internet sensation.
His work was featured in Vogue, reposted by the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York and highlighted in numerous other prestigious publications.
In 2019, following Melbourne’s first Covid lockdown, Tan founded Raya, a bakery on Little Collins Street, that has quickly become a beloved spot for locals and visitors alike. Raya is celebrated for its innovative cakes, which blend traditional techniques with contemporary twists, reflecting Tan’s artistic flair and global inspirations.
Raymond Tan’s journey from self-taught baker to a globally recognized culinary artist is a testament to his passion and creativity. Raya Bakery embodies his commitment to pushing the boundaries of baking and offering customers an extraordinary experience with every bite.
A piece of … begins a new chapter in his story.
Andrew Browne
My Labyrinth
Gallery 1
The labyrinth, a site of mystery, confusion, even desire, is ultimately a challenge to either traverse or experience inwardly
Together, Andrew Browne’s new paintings have a puzzling quality – their labyrinth tangles might function as a metaphor for life’s journey, complete with travails, confusion, disorientation, but also moments of revelation.
Rendered in an immaculate photo-derived style, the new pictures reveal his enduring interest in how we read – and misread – images, especially now in the age of AI and deep-fakes.
Using oil, alkyd aluminum pigment and acrylic, Browne creates his canvases with the help of brush, tape, and solvents to expose underlying layers, often flinging paint in search of immediacy.
‘Alkyd, a resin-based, oil-soluble paint, here combines with aluminium pigment to create the ‘silvery’ effect common to all these paintings, making them especially responsive to the changing conditions of ambient light,’ says Browne.
This is Andrew Browne’s tenth exhibition with Tolarno Galleries. His new paintings attract the eye and the mind by bringing together curious urban observations in tightly made images for deeper looking.
Image: Andrew Browne My Labyrinth 2024 Aluminium pigment, alkyd, acrylic & oil on linen 220 x 160 cm, installation view.
A&A
The Kissing Cabinet
Gallery 1 and 2
The Kissing Cabinet is an exhibition of a new work by A&A (Adam and Arthur). It is the first of a series that epitomises A&A’s exploration of sculptural forms that intentionally blur the boundaries between art, craftsmanship, and design. The cabinet is visually captivating, standing tall with sinuous, curvy shapes and a bold colour palette rendered in the centuries-old craft of straw marquetry. The Kissing Cabinet’s true enchantment unfolds as it gracefully turns inside out, revealing hidden forms and secret compartments. On closing, the shapes converge like abstracted kissing lips. This captivating blend of soft movement and hidden function elevates The Kissing Cabinet beyond furniture, transforming it into a poetic and sensual object.
Pictured: Adam Goodrum and Arthur Seigneur in their studio workshop. Photo: Pier Carthew 2023.
Amos Gebhardt
In memory of stars
Gallery 1
Naarm/Melbourne, Australia: Tolarno Galleries is pleased to present Amos Gebhardt’s new exhibition, In memory of stars.
This exhibition expands on Gebhardt’s recent large-scale lightboxes from the same series installed along the Birrarung (Yarra River) for PHOTO 24. Notably, the work ‘Wallaby’, presented in this exhibition, also won the prestigious William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize in 2022.
“Western cosmologists say bones are made from material traces of incredibly rare, calcium-rich supernovas, which are the explosive death and afterlife of unique stars,” says Gebhardt.
“In memory of stars contemplates lost futures created by ongoing colonial impacts in the form of native animal bones sourced from veterinary and scientific archives.”
Gebhardt’s glowing images delineate the exquisite skeletons of seven native animals killed on Wadawurrung country and oceans off the coast of Australia.
They are arrayed as seven lightboxes on one wall of Gallery 1 in a spiralling sequence of ghost-likehauntings: wallaby, speckled maskray, possum, flounder, cockatoo, moray and dragonfish.
“These works interweave X-ray technology with elements including satellite and long exposure photography of the night sky on Wadawurrung country, where the land animals were found,” says Gebhardt.
“This involved the layering of light frequencies so small they pass through skin, and others so vast they began millions of light years away.”
Gebhardt’s detail-rich lightboxes invite close inspection, revealing information not visible to the naked eye as a way to speak to colonial violences that may be deliberately hidden or erased.
“The architecture of these skeletons are visually complex and wondrous,” says Gebhardt. “While some remain intact for the purposes of scientific exploration, others reveal injuries from technologies such as lawnmowers, fish-hooks, vehicles and firearms.”
“I’m interested in the way dominant societies are haunted by that which they attempt to erase. By enhancing the luminosity of these once animated bones with elements such as fire, smoke, stars and cloud, the work suggests the entangled lines of connection between cosmology, trauma and sentience,” says Gebhardt.
Amos Gebhardt would like to thank the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation and Dr Paola Balla for their generous time, knowledge sharing and consultation.
Thank you to Kane Wilson and the CSIRO for their support and generosity. Marine archival documents courtesy of CSIRO.
This series was supported by Arts South Australia.
Image: Amos Gebhardt Wallaby 2023, Fujitrans on backlit LED lightbox 76 cm x 95 cm x 8 cm, edition of 5.
Rosemary Laing
swansongs
Gallery 1
In this exhibition, Laing prints on the materials of our renovated lives: acrylic used for splash backs and lightboxes; high end packaging used in retail displays; fluted cardboard used for packaging. This truth to recycled materials provides a further level of insight into swansongs: life’s waste coalesces with life’s losses. The time has come to work with what remains and that which survives.
Presented as part of
PHOTO 2024
Image: Blackbutt Road(swanfires 2020), 2020-2023. Packing cardboard, UV ink, wax varnish. 120 x 231.5cm
Elizabeth Willing, Georgia Spain, Guruwuy Murrinyina, Hannah Gartside, Justine Varga
FLYING OUT (FIRECRACKER)
Gallery 1
“… five distinct voices, but they share a quality found in the most special art, where the works exist in excess of themselves, overflowing with feelings, ideas, stories and desires. Yet the right to this aesthetic intensity for women was never a historical given. As art critic Jennifer Higgie makes clear in The Mirror and the Palette, for hundreds of years women artists fought for the space and time to fulfill their curiosities and drives—it’s a lineage that leads to exhibitions like Flying out (firecracker).”
Tiarney Miekus 2024
Image: Georgia Spain Flying out (Firecracker) 2022 Acrylic on linen 198 x 456 cm, installation view.
