Archives: Artists

The work of Eli van Engelen is aesthetically alluring, often frivolous & on the occasion filled with a steely intensity as she produces mood filled depictions of decontextualised found imagery. Drawing inspiration from the vast array of footage accessible online, van Engelen’s figurative work is created through delicately applying graphite onto unprimed canvas & explores themes relating to image collection and archiving and how these collections of online content provide voyeuristic glimpses into the lives of others.

In her latest body of work van Engelen turns her gaze toward a fascination with source material from early to mid-20th century pornography and how the interaction between the enigmatic quality of decontextualized images and the strong sense of narrative implied through the cinematic composition featured in this explicit film genre can transform the meaning or ambiance of a particular situation. Beyond rendering the entire scene of the original image van Engelen is able to imbue in her elegant svelte works a new context and narrative through intense cropping and a replication of cinematic tropes to mirror a surreal and almost dreamlike sensation.

Van Engelen is a Graduate from VCA Painting, she was a Majilis Travelling Fellowship Finalist (2024), won the Young Artist Award, Victorian Artists Society (2022) and was also awarded the Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship (2024).

hannah goldstein has been working as an artist for the past 15 years with her main medium being photography. She is drawn to work with archives and concepts of memory, and thus the questioning of authorship. She moves freely in the realms of self-documentary, narrative portraits and staged photography with political headings. She also works with collage, installation and video.

goldstein has a B.A in photography and human rights from Bard College, New York. She spent one year in residency at the Royal Collage of Art in Stockholm, as well as doing a one-year Master class with Arno Fischer at the Ostkreuz Schule für Fotografie, Berlin. Her work has been exhibited in various countries, most recently in France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany. In 2013 goldstein self published her book family business. She is part of the feminist art collective Die bösen Mösen with Thérèse Kristiansson. goldstein is also the co-founder of Kaetha, a curatorial collaboration with Katja Haustein.

Through his measured use of colour and line Alex Hamilton’s lyrical yet structured drawings pulse. Aesthetically intriguing and riddled with illusionary play, Hamilton allows us to see subliminal tones and rhythms literally streaming through the staid and static urban environments he depicts. Hamilton’s unique visual language, selection of subject, and the cues he layers one upon another, invite the viewer to delve deeper into his complex drawings in search of coded syntax, hidden persuaders, or just an alternate vision of an underlying reality always present. The intersecting lines and free shapes Hamilton places no longer abide by standard rules such as ‘this is up’ ‘that is down’, standard associations don’t quite fit, we are in a different place – harmonious yet hyper attuned, futuristic yet very much from now – a sense that in our day to day world this parallel perspective may hold more truths than at first glance.

Hamilton has exhibited consistently since the mid-1980s throughout the world in solo exhibitions most frequently in London and New York; institutional presentations including the Edith Cowan University (Perth, 2017), Millennium Gallery (Sheffield, 2017), Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna, 2011), Tate Britain (London, 2006); as well as at major International Art Fairs including Art Basel (2018), Art Rotterdam (2018), TEFAF (2017), Art Chicago (2006) & Drawing Now Paris on numerous occasions since 2010.

Hamilton is represented in numerous major Collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of South Australia, Saatchi Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Library, Baltimore Museum of Modern Art, Denver Museum of Modern Art, Gino Gigi Archives, Milan, Judith Hoffberg Archives, Paragon Press, the Charles Booth-Clibbon Collection, as well as Private Collections in Australia, Scotland, France, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, Greece, Russia, UK & USA.

Paintings by Petra Kleinherne are evocative & engaging explorations of colour and form. Structures and the figure within her abstracted landscapes & places may appear, an amalgam of memories of the mind’s eye & real life locations. In terms of process Kleinherne starts spontaneously without regard for a certain outcome and yet over time her visual ideas coalesce to arrive at resolved balanced alluring works. In essence these are expressionist paintings driven by feeling, emotion and whim while also being shaped by aesthetic considerations and a revelry in the alchemy of paint leading to striking sensory compositions.

Kleinherne came to Australia from Germany in 1981 and since that time has lived and worked in Melbourne. At first she studied painting privately for a number of years then formally at Victoria University (2006) that was then followed by the completion of a Bachelor of Fine Arts Painting at Monash University (2010).

Kleinherne has had two significant Solo exhibitions with Jacob Hoerner Galleries, Transformations (2022) & Farbräume (2021), as well as having her works included in Spring 1883 (2024) at the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne. In addition to these presentations Kleinherne had a Solo Exhibition at the German Embassy in Canberra in 2018 and at the Goethe Institute in Melbourne in 2014 into 2015 having also participated in group shows at a variety of galleries since her first foray into establishing her Artistic Practice at the Summer Academy for Visual Arts in Salzburg Austria in 1998. Outside of exhibiting & study Kleinherne undertook a residency in Germany & Croatia in 2019, as well as in France in 2017, stemming from these International residencies & travel her works are in Private Collections in Australia, Germany & France.

John Lennox was an enigmatic, alluring and charismatic painter that sought to show beauty as well as delve deep into the psyche of a world more akin to a surreal dream. While Lennox was formally trained when one focusses attention away from the meticulously and exceptionally well painted idyllic sections of his works a more complex existential side reflecting his in-depth understanding of the human condition comes to the fore. Renewed interest in Lennox’ career comes at a time when many academics and critics across the world have once again focused their attention on the place of outsiders in art history – those that are under-discovered or part of alternate histories – those artists that on occasion are some of the best contributers to grand narratives in art.

Lennox is represented in the Queensland Art Gallery, Benalla Art Gallery, St Vincent’s Hospital and in numerous private and corporate collections in Australia, UK and Europe. Since 2014 Lennox has had three significant solo exhibitions – Manifold (2018), Key works (2016) and Enigma (2014) – participated in numerous group exhibitions, as well as having been shown at Spring 1883 (2018) and shown in the viewing room of Fort Delta, Melbourne. During his lifetime Lennox exhibited consistently from 1972 for 24 years until his premature death in 1996. Lennox studied under George Bell, was a finalist in the Wynne Prize (1974) and won the Camberwell Rotary Prize (1974) in that same year. In 2008 Lennox had a touring retrospective at Benalla Art Gallery (2008) and Castlemaine Art Museum (2008).

Henry Miles has a curious curiosity in relation to how certain eccentric yet highly attuned 20th century thrill seekers identified with and could see a certain Divinity in and reason to Worship machines – as Angels, omnipresent and connecting – and through quasi-myths such as the story of the Bluebird Proteus CN7 these now distant people that so passionately & fatefully strove for records & the exploration of the limits of possibilities are recreated. And with his retro-futurist ‘machine meets spirituality’ subject matter Miles inevitably leads our imaginations into new uniquely coded places explained through hyper-niche references, cryptic technological languages, hybrid terms & theories such as holy transhumanism or theories on how we can “prolong” and “improve” human life approaching the dream of immortality. All of this creating New forms of understanding yet retaining a sense of reflection on yesterday’s World also.

Miles’ thematic interest in the future & the past is embodied in the Eucalyptus printing technique that he uses creating a feedback loop mirroring the struggle to remain separate and devoid of technological integration and remain true to the epistemology of the print making discipline. With his adept touch at creating mesmerising lyrical visual works and his trained understanding of the process of imprinting or transferring inks onto surfaces, with the idea of a parent image transferring an approximation onto another surface, Miles’ work is the culmination of a digital to analogue relay – a composition created digitally that is then printed onto paper and then that physical genesis image that has been compressed and then expanded is used to create monumental multi-panel works or remains dense for smaller editioned prints with all their unique marks and imperfections inevitably there.

In essence, the meticulous and precise hard edge abstract work of David Milne looks at sacred mysteries of Divine Geometry – ‘The Nucleus’. Referencing the alchemical engravings ofthe Seventeenth Century, Milne’s paintings are part riddle and part ‘the spiritualisation of matter’. In his complex yet clear compositions, designed around meditative inflection, Milne infuses intersecting historical iconography with elementary symbols without elaboration.

Since moving to Australia in 1966 David Milne studied at the National Art School at the Sydney Technical College, participated in over 30 exhibitions in Australia, several important shows abroad and consistently produced work by commission. Milne is represented in the Newcastle Art Gallery, Benalla Art Gallery and numerous private and corporate collections in Australia, Asia, Europe and the UK.

Monique Morter is a Melbourne based artist that has developed her practice and consistently exhibited in Australia and Internationally –  most notably Yogyakarta, Indonesia – in recent years. Since completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at RMIT in 2010 Morter has developed a style that immediately engages and captivates her audience, her work has an elegance and sophistication that is created through her application and appreciation of the materials she experiments with.

Since completing his Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT in 1980, and then his Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art from VCA in 1982, David Palliser has had 25 solo exhibitions, participated in over 30 group exhibitions as well as having been included in 11 Institutional exhibitions, including in Melbourne Now at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2013. Palliser has participated in numerous residencies including in Paris in 2009 and then Leipzig and Berlin more recently in 2015 & 2016.

Palliser is represented in the collections of National Gallery of Victoria, Australian National Gallery, Artbank, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Horsham City Art Gallery, Australian Taxation Office, Macquarie Bank, John McBride Collection, Phillip Morris Collection as well as numerous Private Collections in Australia and the UK.

Katya Petetskaya is a visual artist working across painting and performance art. Born in the Soviet Union, she grew up through the change of regimes in 90’s Russia which continues to have an impact on her practice today. Through her gestural abstract language, expressive mark making and love of high key colour, Petetskaya’s works represent deeply emotive responses to her own personal history as well as society’s broader trends and trajectories. In many ways, as a result of these influences and concerns, Petetskaya’s work embodies a way in which she is able to interpret, process and better understand the accelerated changes of a world that is constantly in the process of reaching yet another tipping point.

Petetskaya has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions as a visual artist and performance based artist at festivals and events in Sydney, Leipzig, Venice, Athens, Saas Fe and The Hague, as well as having participated in numerous International residencies in Guna Yala (Panama), Saas Fee (Switzerland), Chikatsuyu (Japan), Izhevsk (Russia) and Leipzig (Germany). Now permanently residing in Australia Petetskaya was a finalist in the Paddington Art Prize (2018) and the Contemporary Art Award Australia (2015). Petetskaya’s works are held in private and public collections in Australia and overseas, including the Macquarie Group Collection and Leipzig International Art Programme. Petetskaya holds a Master of Art (Painting – Award with Excellence) from the University of New South Wales Art and Design.