New Exhibition Opening 11th April

Alexis Kanatsios (b.1999) is a Melbourne-based artist. The ‘object’ figures as a core component in Kanatsios’ practice. Through a number of sculptural and drawing processes, Kanatsios utilises a unique and intuitively derived visual language to explore relationships between form and image. Kanatsios’ work blurs the line between representation and abstraction, appearing at once recognisable and uncanny. Engaging with the aesthetics of design, art history and ‘the everyday’ as tools to navigate curiosity, Kanatsios defines relationships between ‘object’ and audience, creating new contexts for the everyday and fantastical to become increasingly ambiguous. Recent solo/two-person exhibitions include: ‘Neuro’ (2024) with John Meade, Cathedral Cabinet, Melbourne; Cache (2024), Melbourne; ‘Sex with Men’ (2023), TCB, Melbourne; ‘Temperament’ (2023), Asbestos, Melbourne; ‘Reception’ (2023) with Aden Miller, Bossy’s Gallery, Melbourne. Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Container’ (2023), Final Hot Desert, London; ‘Heavens’ (2023), Al Fresco, Canberra; ‘Farr St ‘(2023), Minerva, Sydney; ‘More Love’ (2022), Asbestos, Melbourne.

Holly Bates is a Naarm/Melbourne-based emerging filmmaker and visual artist. Bates recently completed a Masters of Film and Television at the Victorian College of the Arts, graduating with first class. Her graduate film and directorial debut House of Whoreship premiered online on MIFF Play in 2022, with international premieres to be announced in 2023. Bates previously completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) degree at QUT in 2015, graduating with first class and two academic prizes. Holly has exhibited her solo work nationally at spaces such as BLINDSIDE Art Space, Boxcopy contemporary art space and Metro Arts Brisbane. Furthermore she has showcased in her collaborative practice Parallel Park at spaces such as Airspace Projects, UNSW Galleries, BUS projects, La Trobe Art Institute, Carriageworks and the 2021 Rising Festival. Bates has appeared in publications such as UN Magazine, Eyeline Magazine and recently was interviewed by VICE. Holly Bates’s creative practice aims to dismantle and challenge the toxic film tropes historically used to depict sex workers on screen. Utilising filmic methods that abandon the male gaze, Bates seeks to empower workers; honing in on the complexities and subtleties of interpersonal relationships and the day-to-day of the sex industry. Artist as well as filmmaker, Bates is driven to create conceptually rich worlds and stories, layered for both sex worker and mainstream audiences. Using humor and intersectional approaches to film-making, the practice explores personal narratives that are informed by Bates’ position as a queer feminist.

Nick Breedon's (b.1987) sculptural practice weaves references from lived experience, pop culture, and art history into recursive narratives about intimacy, desire and alienation under late stage capitalism. Breedon incorporates a vast array of material processes and making techniques from craft, the western canon of sculpture; painting, textiles and video to make ritual-like objects which incorporate dark humour and extreme attention to detail. Breedon’s career includes solo exhibitions 'Public Art' (2023) at Firstdraft, (Gadigal/Sydney); ‘Feelings’ (2014), exhibited at West Space (Melb) and Firstdraft (Gadigal/Sydney); ‘Bongs and Commodores’, Alaska Projects (Gadigal/Sydney); ‘A Lot of Luck’, Bus Projects (Narrm/Melbourne); and ‘Sierpinski Mountain’, TCB (Narrm/Melbourne). Other highlights include large scale public realm works Let’s Get Metaphysical for Splendour in the Grass Festival in 2012, and large scale holographic artwork ‘Monotone Rainbow’ at Testing Grounds (Narrm/Melbourne) Nick is co-creator and co-host of the podcast Pro Prac in conjunction with artist Kiera Brew Kurec. Pro Prac is an interview style podcast speaking with artists about how they create a sustainable arts practice. Conceived as the talk behind the artist talk, the podcast covers under-represented subjects and facets within the arts including finances, mental health, sustainability, social expectations, privilege, productivity, acceptance and belonging. Nick’s work has been shortlisted for a number of prizes and awards including the 2024 Churchie Prize, 64th Blake Prize for neon work Let’s Get Metaphysical II, the 2015 Darebin Art Prize and the 2015 Wangaratta Contemporary Textiles Prize, and features in the collections of Artbank and City of Melbourne.

Gian Manik (b. 1985) is a Naarm-based artist whose dextrous approach to image-making is characterised by an irreverence for genre and driven by a compulsion to paint. Interested in undermining the colonial properties arming the buttresses of historical painting, Manik ambiguates tradition through the representation of symbolically multivalent and tangential subjects. Informed by a childhood spent voraciously copying reproductions of old master paintings, a subsequent indifference to the polarities of high and low culture has rendered his work resistant to traditional stylistic categorisation. Instead, Manik’s practice can be read as an ongoing investigation into the boundaries of representation which often sprawls into the modalities and enviornments of fashion, music and performance. His compositions interweave both carefully distilled and intensely gestural passages, forming a layered palimpsest that references and registers the quotidian fabric of his social and cultural surroundings. Distinguished by an interminable mix of nostalgia and desire, drama and tragedy, his work reverberates an uncertainty of meaning. Strategies such as repetition and mimicry blur the intended resonance or ‘truth’ attributed to each object, place, scene or character. As a result, Manik’s paintings often function as parafictions, interpolating personal experience within constricted frameworks of historical narrative. Manik received a BFA (Honours) from Curtin University in 2011. After relocating to Naarm/Melbourne, the artist completed a Master of Fine Art (Honours) at Monash University in 2012. Since then, he has exhibited widely across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in institutional and commercial contexts. He has received institutional commissions by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA, 2022) and the Perth Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA, 2024). Additionally, his work has been featured in significant exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA), Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth and the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA), Adelaide. Recently, Manik was a resident artist at Gertrude Studios (2022-2024), previously undertaking residencies at Bundanon, NSW; DESA in Bali, Indonesia and the Australian Ballet in Naarm/Melbourne. His works are included in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Artbank, Lawson Flats and numerous private collections across Australia, New Zealand, North America and Europe.

Yangamini (“holes” in Tiwi), is a guerrilla collective of Sistagirls that was initiated in 2022 by Tiwi-Warlpiri elder Crystal Love Johnson Kerinauia. The collective accommodates trans and non-binary First Nations members and accomplices to support sexual minorities who seek refuge from the rigid gender customs of mainland communities. Yangamini strengthens gender-fluid bush knowledge and challenges missionary sexual oppression, frontier violence, racialised governance, economic control, rhetorical sustainability, and mining extractions in the settler Northern Territory. Current members include Crystal Love, Francis Jules Kapijiyi Orsto, Ainsley Kerinauia, Romana Paulson, Joachim Tipiloura, Nadine Purranika Lee and Jens ‘Johnita’ Cheung, with connections across Tiwi, Gulumirrgin, Warlpiri, Kunwinjku, Yolŋu, Wardaman, Karajarri, Gurindji, Burarra, Minjunbal, Bundjalung, Mununjali and other extracted lands and seas.

Crystal Love (b.1970) is an artist, performer, activist, educator and mentor, and a respected Sistergirl Tiwi Elder. As the epitome of Territory royalty, gracefully residing between Darwin and the enchanting Tiwi Islands, she is revered as the queen of the Island, earning admiration and adoration for her unwavering love and compassion. A true headlining act, Crystal has performed across the continent and dominates the stage effortlessly, leaving audiences in awe. Crystal made local government history as the first Indigenous transgender woman to be elected to the Tiwi Shire Council in 2012, and was appointed as a Rainbow Ambassador for World Pride Sydney in 2023. In her tireless fight for transgender rights, Crystal Love is a force to be reckoned with, an emblem of community strength and resilience. Her infectious spirit is certain to leave an indelible mark on your heart, reminding you of the power of pure love and acceptance.

Tay Haggarty’s practice explores how reductive forms can be used as an open field to reflect upon personal and shared queer experience. Their works take the form of collaborations, performances, videos, sculpture and public art. Haggarty uses industrial and ready-made materials that, when arranged within a space, heighten precarious elements through tension and balance. Their work is often minimal and site specific. Haggarty is a co-director of DRIVER ARI and is one half of the collaborative duo Parallel Park. They completed a post graduate degree in Public Art at Monash University in 2022 and their Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) degree at the Queensland University of Technology in 2015. They have had solo shows at the Institute of Modern art, Kunstbunker ARI and Wreckers Artspace. Haggarty has also shown in group exhibitions with Metro Arts, Bus Projects, UNSW Galleries and more. They were the 2019 recipient of the Jeremy Hynes award.

Ari Angkasa (b. 1997, Pekanbaru) is an octo modal artist: filmmaker, performer, director, writer, theorist, impersonator, comedienne, and fish. With a penchant for the surreal and absurd, Ari imbues humour in her works to interrogate the statecraft of art and aesthetics in an increasingly atomised world. Ari holds a BA in Sociology and a BFA (Honours) from Monash University and has exhibited widely with recent works showing at Queer East Film Festival London, Abbotsford Convent, and Storage Bangkok. In 2024 she was shortlisted for the Incinerator Art Award for Social Change.

Leen Rieth (b.1988) is a performer, artist, and educator whose work examines socially and systemically implicit perception. Leen was awarded their PhD from UNSW Art & Design in 2024. It examines queer and trans artists’ methods of institutional critique. Leen has been practicing pole since 2021, and their performances are intended to offer a window into an expression of trans desire and sexuality. @leen_rieth