ARTISTS

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ANDY HARWOOD

Andy Harwood is a contemporary Brisbane artist, exhibiting for 20 years has a design background which he harnesses to create complex mathematically derived compositions.

 Andy has shown 15 individual exhibitions throughout Australia and a vast selection of group exhibitions locally and internationally. In 2020, Harwood’s painting, ‘9 to the power of 9 (2)’, was shown and acquired for the Museum of Brisbane’s Bauhaus Now! exhibition alongside works by Josef Albers and Vassily Kandinsky. The influence of these forefathers of the Bauhaus movement is evident in Harwood’s artistic practice. More recently, successful solo exhibitions ‘Future Rumination’ in Sydney, 2022 and ‘Adjusted Light’ in Brisbane, 2023 were shown with represented gallery, Studio Gallery Group.

 His current practice is a study of the mechanics of vision and exploits the relationship between perception and interpretation. The use of structural, gradating forms creates the effect of topographical depth within the canvas.  The work actively engages the viewer’s own emotional response, through the interruption of foreground and background. The hard corners of geometric forms direct the gaze outwards to the edge of the canvas, while the transition of gradients from light to dark pull the gaze inwards. This creates the illusion of receding and advancing planes and shifts the focus of the viewer between inner and outer space. There is a juxtaposition between the sharp precision of these forms and the softness of the layered, semi-translucent, painterly gradients, blending colours together in a reverberating hum. The ability to execute his designs flawlessly is essential to the suggestive power of a work, finding that balance between geometric abstraction and tonal harmony. While the static canvas is vibrating with its own kinetic energy, the gaze of the viewer is simultaneously pulled between movement and stillness.

Representation — Studio Gallery Group, Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane

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RACHEL BURKE

Rachel Burke is a practising multidisciplinary artist, designer, and author based in Brisbane, Australia. Known for her vibrant, tactile wearable artworks and iconic tinsel creations, her work is inspired by a love for naive craft materials and transforming the mundane into the magical.

Rachel has exhibited her work in many gallery spaces across Australia, including The Museum of Brisbane, Saint Cloche Gallery and The Australian Centre of the Moving Image.

She has also published five books: Fancy Long Legs (2024), Craft Roach (2023), Pla Pla: Gather, Make, Play. (2023), Be Dazzling (2018), and Daphne & Daisy (2017).

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BONNIE HISLOP

Bonnie Hislop is an artist focusing on ceramics, particularly hand-building and ceramic illustration. Grounded in technical skill, her practice has evolved from creating illustrative ceramic planters to large-scale sculptural work. Bonnie uses her forms to critically engage with the world around her and document the human experience. Working from her Meanjin home studio, Bonnie meticulously handcrafts her forms through an involved and often uncertain process inherent in working with clay. She unites bright colours and satirical concepts to engage her audience in a dialogue with the physical world around them. Her work intersects traditional representations of ceramics with a craft aesthetic to create a contemporary interpretation of the ceramic medium. The artwork doesn’t take itself too seriously yet can capture personal experiences universal to the human condition. Her practice aims to encapsulate universal experiences of frustration, angst, grief, emotional fatigue, feminine strength, intimacy and desire. The performative, brightly coloured ceramics forge an existence through joy and curiosity. In 2022, she and photographer Melanie Hinds developed an ongoing collaborative series that puts Hislop in the frame with the artwork, extending the messaging of the ceramic works. This collaboration seeks to subvert perceptions of the classic ‘artist portrait’ and expectations of femininity.

Bonnie regularly facilitates ceramic classes, produces public programs and exhibits her work around Australia, most recently being part of Bundaberg Regional Gallery’s exhibition ‘XX’ and QATACON24. In 2023 she was a finalist in the Siliceous Award for Ceramic Excellence and the National Emerging Art Prize.

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KATE BARRY

Katherine is a Christchurch-born expressionistic abstraction painter living and working in Brisbane, Meanjin. Katherine’s painting is driven by instinctive and emotional responses to landscape and the energy of human interconnection. Losing herself in a dense subtropical environment through her ritualistic running practice, Katherine's experiences are processed through the artist and shared with viewers via distinct gestural mark-making. Sources of inspiration are created with qualities of mystery, sensuousness and nostalgia in an intuitive, spontaneous application of paint. Works explore feelings of space, manipulation and the chance of built-up layers finding a voice on the canvas. Compositions arise from balancing opposing angles and strokes with the vitality of colour and texture. As defiant marks wander the canvas, layers build, and textures emerge and animate the painted surface. By immersing the viewer in the rich and fecund terrain of her paintings, a synchronicity between nature and organic movement encourages a connection and almost primitive emotional reaction to Katherine's art. As we pass by we allow ourselves to be drawn in.

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HENRY WEXLER

Henry Wexler is a Meanjin (Brisbane) based artist. Since completing an Honours Degree in Fine Art and visual Art at the Queensland University of Technology in 2009, he has exhibited locally, interstate and a couple of times internationally. While his work spans video, installation, and drawing, his recent body of work focuses on painting. His work draws on a history of low-fi and slacker art and combines it with absurdist and dark humour. Through this tactic, Wexler constructs ‘Confusions’ and pokes fun at the nuances of language, conversations, media, politics, society, art and indeed life itself.

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CHRISTINA LOWRY

Christina Lowry is an interdisciplinary Logan/Brisbane artist with a love for photography, art history and nature.

A full-time practising artist, Christina regularly exhibits in regional and private galleries. With a focus on research-based explorations of the natural world, Christina explores the human impact on our natural environment and that of the flora and fauna around us through photography and audience engagement.

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FRANCES EDWINA POWELL

Frances Edwina Powell (she/her) is an emerging artist and arts facilitator based in Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia. She explores the ideas of the body, relationships, performance and home, primarily working on paper. Frances often references figure drawing, abstract shapes and colour associations within her work. Working from her home studio, she crafts collages and illustrative oil paintings that explore form and concept. Her practice is often informed by material and process, letting her thoughts percolate as she engages with tangible materials.

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