Virtually Live

Sona is an artist and illustrator from Armenia, currently living and working in Brisbane, Australia. Although she has been creating for as long as she can remember, it was quite a journey until she decided to become a full-time artist. Her other life-long interest was literature, and she started her professional career as a translator of literature from Western Armenian into Russian and later – as an editor. She tried on some other hats as well, often juggling them and trying to have as much fun as possible. And although after moving to Australia, in 2008, she decided to focus all her attention on visual arts, she is still constantly in search of various forms of expression in which she can combine her love for drawing, painting, playing with Photoshop and literature. As a result, her art is quite versatile, she works both in traditional and digital media, in colour and black and white, always trying out new things and experimenting with new techniques. Apart from working on her personal art projects, she loves illustrating books for children and adults. Many of her works are held in private collections in Australia, Europe, Russia and the US.

Peter is drawn to reflections on culture, community and the deteriorating effect of global warming and climate change. In each of these works, Peter attempts to state his felt response to the moments experienced and to leave the viewer with an invitation.Peter Breen was born in Melbourne, Australia and completed high school [ Brisbane State High School] in 1968 after moving to Queensland in the early 60’s. He trained in Medical Radiography at RMIT [Melbourne] completing a number of appointments at Prince Henry’s Hospital [ now Monash Medical Centre] Prince Charles, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and in private practice with Queensland Diagnostic Imaging. He also served in Cambodia as a radiographer with World Vision during the Vietnam/Cambodia conflicts. After theological training, he entered pastoral work from 1982 – 2003 with parish leadership responsibilities in Bundaberg and Everton Hills. It was during his time at Everton Hills that Jugglers was conceived of with two of his sons and two other friends and begun in 1998. After leaving parish leadership in 2003, Jugglers was launched at 103 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley where it remained until 2018. Jugglers continues to provide consulting services, studio spaces at Tarragindi, a national drawing prize – Marie Ellis OAM Prize for Drawing and The Stairwell Project. The Stairwell Project was developed out of Peter’s awareness that stress and anxiety can be reduced and well-being enhanced in hospital spaces for staff, patients and the general public by the presence of performing professional musicians. The project now in its 4th year is present in the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital. It is partly funded via public appeals and at RBWH is subsidised by the RBWH Foundation. Peter has been married to Mavis [ Maeve] for 45 years and has 4 children and 8 grandchildren. Since leaving organised religion, Peter has also been developing his own arts practice and is currently developing a body of work around his perceived religious constructs and their affects.

Renata Buziak (PhD) is a photo-media artist, educator and researcher passionate about physically engaging nature and organic processes in her interdisciplinary practice. Based in Brisbane Australia, her practice builds on alternative and experimental photography, intercultural and art-science research, and cross-disciplinary collaborations. For over a decade she has been developing an image making process- the biochrome, by fusing organic and photographic materials subject to organic decomposition. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, received a number of art awards, and features in private and public collections.

Emma is an inter-disciplinary artist whose practice is based in drawing. She loves to use process driven, laborious techniques and experiment with a variety of textiles. Her work is a curious enquiry into the human condition that she frames within paganistic ritual or folklore tales.

My work represents a search for meaning in the Semiotic Blanks.Through the use of psychogeography, I map my way through the world combining my lived experiences with my inner interpretations of them, to discover myself within a middle ground, defined as thePenumbra.

Using the ‘paranoiac-critical method’ as pioneered by theSurrealists, I allow imagery to emerge from the substrate on a subconscious level. Embracing the nautical and sometimes steampunk themes that this technique gives rise to, I begin to notice the appearance of common metaphors. My art practice and Gesamtkunstwerk form a collection that together tells the narrative of this search.

UsingThe Age of Sailas a point of departure, my work attempts to capture the imagination and sense of wonder that once inspired early explorers to cast themselves out into the unknown, following the human drive to fill in the blanks on their maps. It is my hope that the viewer is instilled with this sense of wonder and adventure as they look to their own lives and the choices and motives for the directions they take. I want my works to inspire a deepintrospectionfrom the viewer, symbolism and coded messages hidden within the works reward the observant viewer and act as signposts to guide them along the way.

Sabrina Lauriston is a professional photographer with a passion for storytelling. Her first love is film photography, using both medium format and pinhole cameras to create detailed and striking black and white images.“You don’t take a picture, you create it, and for me the creation of an image is in the camera, in the instant you press your shutter.”– Sabrina Lauriston, 2016

Ego is an artistic project that explores a new field in the self-portrait of photography. Sabrina Lauriston is interested in using pinhole colour photography to analyze and understand her own Ego to represent the true nature of her real emotions.In psychology, the Ego, the ego is that instance which has the task of mediating drives and social needs and is therefore responsible for contact and for relations with reality, both internal and external. The ego organizes and manages environmental motivations and it is the main mediator of awareness: it is the central manager of all psychic activities, which turns towards itself and towards the external environment, generating awareness of oneself and of reality. The ego is therefore the seat of gender identity, will and personality. The ego is therefore essential for the structuring of one’s own identity and the affirmation of oneself.

This project wants to reflect on what a portrait can capture of a person and what he can not. He wants to question how photography and art can be used to understand and express their true emotions by abandoning their own mask and simply being themselves.

Meredith Macleod’s work is a reflection upon significant and frequently ignored issues relating to the struggle between intellect, emotion and reality. Inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s playA Doll’s House(1879), Meredith explores the interplay of empty signifiers that can replace reality with a series of egocentric games, patriarchal dominance and a perversion of basic reality. Her work questions the utopian dream of an existence in freedom and truth as she examines a complex place of loss and alienation.Informed by a committed practice to drawing from life, Meredith’s work is drawing based with a strong commitment to intaglio etching and photopolymer printmaking.

“Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You’ll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you’ll realize it’s always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won’t understand why or how.”― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

Chris Macpherson’s photography discusses the struggle to form and maintain an identity, and the implications this has on ones feelings of security and belonging. Inspired by the above quote from Mark Z. Danielewski’s “House of Leaves” (Pantheon, 2000), Macpherson produced two black and white photographs, using digital overlays and repeated, refracted patterns to emphasise the way that life changes can affect perceptions of a person. Macpherson likens darkness in his photographs to areas that are oblivious and devoid of information, where conversely light areas represent awareness and information saturation. Curiously, neither awareness nor obliviousness is superior to the other, as both have the capacity to isolate a person.

“Where’re you from?” implies a previous narrative, one that must be grounded in the foreign and never the familiar and localized, never authentic.The question also has the power to constantly unsettle.“You look/are different”.“You are not like us”.There is an unspoken pity underlying the assumption that one’s displacement must have involved trauma.There is no room for explanation.The assumptions are made, and they stick.It’s very utterance, excludes in some meaningful way, going further to say “I’m better than you, because I AM from here!”Searching for some sense of inclusivity we are left to consider:When do I get to proudly say “I’m from here”?Can I ever go back, or does resettlement imply only forward momentum?

Where’re you from?…(Acid Test | Self Portrait | Denial) invokes a crude, abstract rendition of the topography of the course of two rivers.One I grew up beside, one I live beside now.Half of my life with each.The pages forming this work are each soaked in a potassium permanganate solution, drying to reveal rich sepia-like tones, only to have their underlying whiteness violently exposed through angry splashes of lemon juice, it’s acid eating through any colour it touches.This messy, gestural use of “foreign” mediums is an argument acknowledging not only my connection to specific places but, hopefully, the holistic interconnectedness of all things…

Individual works titles:1. Where’re2. you3. from4. ?5. …6. Acid7. Test8. Self9. Portrait10. Denial

Your trees may not function exactly as my trees do, and your forest might look different, but the underlying narrative is the same: forests matter at a more fundamental level than most of us realize.– Peter Wohlleben in The Hidden Life of Trees

Carol holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA), a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts (NY, NY), and is presently a PhD Candidate at University of Queensland (St Lucia).

As an arts writer, Carol has been covering the visual arts, culture and the environment since the mid-90s, both in the US and Australia. Her articles and reviews are published regularly inSculpture,Artlink,Art Monthly Australasia, Art & Australia, The Brooklyn Rail, The Journal of Australian Ceramics,andeyeline. Carol has contributedmany essays for exhibition catalogues and artist publications here in Australia and internationally.

Billy Shannon is a painter, working in acrylic on canvas. Much of his technique has been informed by his 40 year oscillation between working in the performing arts as a scenic artist and and being actively involved in the visual arts.Billy is heavily engaged in the movement of light through layers of paint and varnish to bring out the emotional content of his work.

Belinda Sinclairis a Redcliffe based Artist working in Print, Sculpture and Photography.

“To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return” Ursula K. Le Guin.

Guided by an Animist world view Sinclair’s images manifest through a responsive and embodied practice of journey, ritual and observance. Engaging the viewer in Magic and Place, Sinclair traverses the interaction between the human and the more than human to reveal visions of spirit at play in the world. In the service of dream and the imaginal Sinclair’s work evolves as a collaboration with spirit.

Her recent work;Earthbound,Speaking in DreamsandWeatherlorewere developed over a three-year period and created on the lands of the Ningy Ningy, Butchulla, Turrbal, Jagera, Gubbi Gubbi and Wakka Wakka peoples with gratitude to the past, present and emerging elders within these communities.

The artist acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the land on which she works and lives, through recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community.

Through solo and collaborative practices, Jordan Azcune explores notions of utopia, the ineffable, and larger ideas of optimism. Raised as a Jehovahs’s Witness and growing up queer, his approach to art making begins with a fluency in biblical theology and uses related visual cues of the 20th century to reconsider histories which map the conflicting intersection of emotion, spirituality, and architecture. These references are translated by using ancient and contemporary techniques to reveal a fragile state of observance and communion with experience.

Azcune lives and works in South East Queensland. In 2016 he completed Honours in Fine Art at Queensland University of Technology and has since completed a mentorship in Public Art with Lincoln Austin and is apprenticing with theologian and iconographer Leonard Brown on Byzantine Gold work . Azcune’s work has been exhibited across Brisbane, the Gold Coast regional Queensland and Nationally.

Ephemeral installations exploring light, place & belonging in Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island)

Lisa Kurtz is a photographic artist based in Brisbane, Australia.Her work explores concepts of memory, place and time.

Tom More is a self-taught artist who began painting during lay-off times between a range of jobs that up to now kept him on the move across the country. Now that COVID-19 has forced a stop to rodeos and carnivals, Tom has been painting more regularly. This new group of work focus around his work as a carni, and his enduring interest in the spirit world.

A long time ago I dreamed about this land, this country that I call home now. It took me decades to find it. For the most part I didn’t know I was searching for it.It found me. Through love.

Despite the fact I chose my artistic path early, I went through a considerable effort throughout my life to avoid being an artist.That included a brief stint as a professional boxer, a questionable career choice, but invaluable adventure.Recently I reconsidered my priorities, and focus mainly on my art practice.

Throughout my artistic career the focus has been on the question of belonging, not only our sense of belonging to a place in indigenous terms, but also the effect upon the natural environment due to global warming. Equally is this work about the Diaspora of human kind, whether this is caused by natural disasters or human injustice like oppression related to religion, race, gender or sexuality, the work is in search for a modern Utopia.

Tamara Whyte is an Aboriginal artist and writer. Her family descends from Warrgamay coastal far north Queensland and Vanuatu. She has a passion for stories that challenge and asks people to work towards an understanding of their own agency. She was recently awarded the inaugural Documentary Australia Foundation’s Indigenous Fellowship, for her concept Base 8. Base 8 explores mathematics embedded in the Kinship system of Central Arnhem Land.