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ART PACKS
5 + 5 (Part Two)
Curated by Anoushka Sansom
23 October - 02 November 2024
5+5 is a view into the future, showcasing ten talented early-career artists that represent the next generation of Australian contemporary art.
Fast-paced and experimental in nature, the exhibition consists of ten mini-solo shows across the month of October presented in two iterations.
Part of Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios’ Emerging Artists Program.
Lucy Anlezark
Lucy Anlezark (she/her) is an artist studying and practising on the unceded land of the Gadigal People. Heavily process-based in her practice, she turns to the archive, poetry, and sound as sites of research. Developing both personal and impersonal archives of photographs, texts and sound recordings, Lucy then scrutinises their contents, transmuting their materiality via digital manipulations and printmaking processes. It is from these considered processes of observation and material play that she seeks to confront the material/ immaterial diametric that we often use to measure what is absent. She asks, where is the threshold between presence and disappearance? Is there a materiality for the in-between; the elusive, the partial, the provisional?
An absence, resounding, is a devotion to hauntings. The first part of this project develops from a careful meditation of listening and observation. Using a microphone and the camera, she collects sounds, light and shadow, treating this process like a careful hunt for spectres. The sound waves of the recording are then metamorphosed into visualisations of light and shadow, the photographs abstracted digitally. Then stretched into multi-dimensional silk and mirror prints, these recordings thus assume a material dimension. In this play with opacity and space, Lucy contemplates if it is possible to bring the invisible and absent back into the realm of the tangible and present. Can we find a texture of silence? Does a shadow have weight? Does the spectre have a pulse?
Sophia Lee Georgas
Sophia Lee Georgas is a visual artist living and working in Sydney, Australia, and attributes her art practice to her fixation with architectural structures dedicated to higher beings from her transpersonal experiences as a child in Greek Orthodox churches. Graduating with a Master of Fine Art from the National Art School, Sydney (NAS) in 2021, Georgas was awarded the British School of Rome Art Residency 2023 and selected to exhibit a solo exhibition at Orange Regional Gallery as part of The Seed 2024. Georgas has been a finalist in the Georges River Art Prize 2023, the Waverly Art Award and Fisher’s Ghost Art Award 2022, the Grace Cossington Smith Art Award 2021, and the Clyde & Co Art Award 2020.
From late September to December 2023, I completed a three-month art residency at the British School of Rome, awarded by the National Art School of Sydney, Australia. I utilised the three months to expand my studies on the pursuit of utopia by studying the city’s spiritual, sacred, and monumental sites. I explored a new spiritual, sacred, or monumental site daily, examining the ‘mystical sensation’ I experienced, a feeling of profound awe in the spaces embodied through architectural imagery, religious symbols, artworks, and motifs.
My artworks presented at Gallery Lane Cove Creative Studios during the 5+5 exhibition are a new series of paintings and an installation that examine the spatial and ephemeral qualities of religious architecture, as well as material representations of utopia in art and religion. Expanding beyond a specific site or religion, my paintings transcend the everyday. Engaging with the aesthetic tools of sacred geometry, collage, and colour as forms within religious architecture, I create paintings that evoke the divine aura that can be sensed in sacred sites. I am working from memory and any association I have with the manipulated colour, light, space, decorations, and shapes in the interior and exterior façade, creating a vision of heaven on earth – a utopia. I am utilising this transpersonal experience to create an ethereal atmosphere within my paintings that allows spatial and temporal qualities to emerge. Through collage and fragmentation, I reimagine the original site by removing the sanctified structure from its dutiful context in an attempt to embody the potential for an alternative, nostalgic and futuristic utopia free from political and religious implications.
Gosha Heldtz
Gosha Heldtz (owiebuh) is a Gomeroi artist who works predominately in sculpture and painting. Originally from rural NSW, she moved to Sydney in 2021 to study a BFA and is now undergoing honours at UNSW ADA. Gosha’s work is deeply rooted in her Indigenous identity and the duality of how that exists within different spaces. She often works on a large scale with vibrant colours referencing pop culture and specific Australian motifs. Her recent practice centres around the deconstruction of Australian patriotism and the effects of such a culture on Indigenous bodies. Drawing from both communal and personal experiences, Gosha uses her work as a tool to connect and reach a wider audience that may be uneducated about the indigenous experience.
This exhibition is a light-hearted celebration of Gosha's connection between her newfound urban life and the countryside she still calls home. It’s a colourful acknowledgement of the two spaces she inhabits: one being ‘the big smoke’ (Sydney), and the other her country home in rural northern NSW. Featuring a series of paintings and sculptures, the show captures the contrasts between these spaces in a comical manner. A central element in the exhibition is a recurring character that Gosha often paints—both a motif and a self-portrait. This character appears in this show as a playful depiction of a cowboy, as to reference herself in these spaces as a ‘country’ person. The works also feature fun moments from Gosha’s life, from new friendships and parties to riding her postie around town. Most of these works are created on cardboard, reflecting Gosha's commitment to accessibility in art. Through the use of bold imagery and personal narrative, Gosha juxtaposes the liberation of urban life with the emotional connection to rural culture. Her works create a dialogue between the excitement of embracing a new environment and the comfort of home, celebrating the freedom found in the city with her ingrained country roots
Dana Hubraq
Dana Hubraq is an emerging artist and writer practicing on Gadigal land, holding a degree in Fine Arts/Arts from the University of New South Wales. She primarily works with oils, creating collages of Circassian iconography and traditional battle paintings in an attempt at making sense of her diasporic heritage. Her work aims to connect with viewers on the basis of grief and nostalgia, blurring the boundary between the Circassian plight and the experiences of those who may be unfamiliar with it.
‘Attempts at Understanding’ presents visual representations of the introspective work involved in piecing together cultural identity—one that involves a Circassian heritage and a Jordanian and Australian upbringing. A diasporic Circassian ancestry is researched and understood through appropriations of battle paintings done by Russian artists, who were largely complicit in the Russo-Circassian War. References to Australian beach culture appear in such depictions—most notably in a painting of a pebble beach in Sochi; where Russia hosted the winter Olympics without acknowledging it as a major site for the Circassian genocide in 1864.
Snapshots of the interior of the artist’s grandfather’s home in Jordan, decorated in a typically Jordanian manner, adds depth to the stereotypical image of the Circassian horseman, popularised in Circassian media and traditional paintings. The integration of textiles within some of the works brings a material quality to the frustratingly intangible nature of history, fostering a sense of connection and reconnection.
Adrian Mok
Adrian Mok is a Hong Kong-born Australian artist based on unceded Bigjigal land. After immigrating to Australia as a child, he missed out on many cultural nuances that could not be directly experienced. This gap in knowledge has driven Adrian to explore Chinese cultural heritage from a diaspora perspective in order to connect with his cultural identity. Through his practice of installation, Adrian recontextualises these various facets of Chinese culture, and he finds himself increasingly drawn to the motif of Taoist shrine iconography. With an eye towards speculative futures, Adrian contemplates the future of Taoist shrines and the envisioned 'neo-worshipping' rituals that may be conducted.
This exhibition, titled Neo-Worship, features a series of LED light-based installations inspired by Taoist shrine iconography. Through these works, Mok contemplates the future of Hong Kong’s Taoist shrines and imagines the emergence of ‘neo-worshipping’ rituals. In this speculative future, traditional shrines dedicated to different deities such as Guan Yin (觀音) and Guan Yu (關羽) transform, appearing in various imagined states—from lively, frequented sites to neglected, abandoned relics. At the heart to the exhibition are neon deity effigies, replacing the conventional statues typically seen in these shrines. Neon, a material symbolising both Hong Kong's historic neon signage and futuristic sci-fi aesthetics, is used to reflect the intersection of past and future. Neo-Worship invites viewers to consider how cultural traditions are maintained, adapted, and reshaped in the face of a changing world.
Anoushka Sansom
5+5 Curator
Anoushka Sansom is a Queer, trans, curator & artist of Ashkenazi and Mizrahi heritage.
Anoushka has a strong commitment to bringing diverse voices to the fore. Based in São Paulo for many years, she was the founder and curator of Arte das Quebradas - a cultural initiative that worked with Brazilian artists from low-income backgrounds to foster their careers and provide them with the means to present their work to broad audiences. Since 2018, Anoushka has provided curatorial support to Muruwari artist, Dr Virginia Keft, on the artist's exhibitions and projects. The most recent of these was an exhibition and community activation project at WayOut Artspace, Kandos, entitled, waalarrinji (long-time-now), in January 2024.
Her forthcoming project, Queer Materials, will present LGBTQIA+ textile artists that narrate Queer experiences through their practices at Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios as part of the Gallery's Mardi Gras Program.
Anoushka began working at Gallery Lane Cove + Creative Studios in 2023. She holds a Master of Art Curating from the University of Sydney, a Master of Arts from University of New England and a Bachelor of Arts from University of Wollongong.