2 – 26 April 2025
OPENING EVENT Friday 4 April 5:30 pm. To be opened by acclaimed writer, journalist and broadcaster Hilary Burden.
Despard Gallery is pleased to present a special curated exhibition bringing together six multi-generational, multi-disciplinary emerging and early career Tasmanian women artists. Now in its second iteration, the exhibition showcases a diverse range of creative approaches and mediums, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, jewellery and ceramics, featuring new works by Jo Chew, Samantha Dennis, Ileigh Hellier, Rosanagh May, Cassie Sullivan and Sophie Witter.
The exhibition presents an exploration of how we define our sense of place, including how both our public and private relationships to our environment are forged through personal experience. This includes drawing inspiration from the strong sense of community, dynamic ideas and spaces that are unique to Tasmania, such as its waterways, wildlife, bushland, artists, musicians and spirit. Specific inquiries look towards the suffering or plight of animals and the environment, highlighting a lack of empathy and urgency to protect those we share place with. Others conjure up feelings of life, death, loss and heartache, reflecting on intergenerational history, personal relationships and how creative processes can become cathartic, allowing us to sit with something uncomfortable and in time turns into quietude and strength.
What underpins each artist’s practice and unites their individual objectives, is a strong social conscious and shared sense of responsibility for the people, places and natural world, which provides unending inspiration.
[photography of artworks by Samantha Dennis by Melanie De Ruyter of Melanie Kate Creative. Portrait photograph of Ileigh Hellier & Cassie Sullivan by Rosie Hastie. Portrait photograph of Jo Chew by Louise Middleton. Photographs of artworks courtesy of the artists.]
Click here to register your interest for Contemporary Tasmanian Women Artists.
