2 July - 26 July 2025
front gallery
Aaron Ashwood & Yolanda Scholz Vinall
Remnants
Statement
Remnants is a collaborative project by Aaron Ashwood and Yolanda Scholz Vinall, a material exploration of studio by-products as final form. Both artists maintain practices individually distinct from one another, however, they share a common interest in the things left behind. Accumulative debris from studio processes and documentational methods come together formally to produce something new and unexpected, simultaneously sharing and demystifying the creative practice. Objects such as a desk chairs, reclaimed clay from unfired ceramic works, drop sheets left over from a previous body of work, studio experiments and general “waste material’ are recontextualised as works of art within the gallery space. Within this installation, documentation of the artists practices and shared studio space are situated. Presenting a thread of gained knowledge through studio play. In doing so, Ashwood and Scholz Vinall aim for these remnants of making to encapsulate their time working together within their shared private studio, where the viewer is invited to explore the processes and happenings within it.
Artist Bio
Aaron Ashwood’s practice is multidisciplinary, following the path of least resistance in producing spatial and minimal site-specific installations. Where time, space, and memory combine into an aesthetics of resourcefulness, immediacy, and process.
Yolanda Scholz Vinall primarily works with painting, ceramics, installation and video. Engaging with ideas around the sensory and ephemeral nature of memory, site, decay and process, her works aim to offer a hopeful calling to slow down.
BACK gallery
John Brooks
Automated thoughts from imprinted fragments, chewed up by time
Statement
The history of textiles has been fragmented – imprints of woven structures recorded as clay imprints and diagrams of weaving equipment inscribed on earthenware are the oldest surviving records, while textile fragments and loom wood disintegrate over time. Ceramic pots may have originated as woven baskets reinforced with clay to create vessels for carrying water, and as weaving processes became more complex, clay weights were used to hold threads under tension. This serves as an early example of weaving interacting with other disciplines. In 1804, the jacquard loom was invented. Operated with binary punch cards, this allowed for more complexity in the pattern and structure of woven fabrics. This loom was the ancestor to the computer, and therefore the smartphone. While these fragments are compelling, it’s the historical gaps that leave room for speculation and exploration – differing theories acting as portals to alternate realities.
The automation of weaving was a key component of the industrial revolution, and lead to the loss of work for weavers, forming the luddite movement. This also began the process of separating thinking from making in the Western art canon. While historically, the process of weaving created tangents in other disciplines, these developments devalued the perception of a complex and inventive discipline. Industrialisation’s separation of thinking from making is widely seen as an anachronism, however now that AI has automated thinking, this sparks questions around the differences between thinking and making and the biases that inform the perception of value between different modes of making. When automation separates making from thinking, what happens when we automate thinking?
Artist Bio
John Brooks is a Naarm-based artist of Irish and English descent. With a foundation in weaving, he trained extensively in materials and textile structures before expanding his practice to encompass sculpture, video, and installation. Recently, he has begun exploring ceramics, delving into the intertwined and interdependent histories of pottery and weaving.
Working primarily with soft materials, he incorporates symbolism, slow craft, and digital processes to reflect on the influence of objects and materials on human experiences and the anthropomorphic qualities often projected onto non-human entities.
FELTdark
erin ginty
swamp serenade
Statement
swamp serenade is a video work about a body of water situated in between an abandoned power station and the sea, near the artist’s previous home. Travelling to the swamp means walking along a high voltage fence, with plants encroaching upon it, so the pathway is narrow. There’s a humm of electricity that melts into the sound of crashing waves. No matter what time of year or day the sun is beating down on you. Insects are darting about in the dry grass, and litter has been blown in by the wind, lining the periphery. When rain leaks its way into the swamp, the soil softens, the bank breaks down, microbes babble and burst. The earth is swelling, the swamp is breathing, and the blowfish are cyclically swimming.
The mysticism of the swamp is that it never remains known, the murky water solicits slippages in and out of focus. It swirls with grit, slime, muck and goo, rhythm weaving its way between the reeds. Sometimes the swamp is clear, and you can see the intense vibrancy of life it holds, but sometimes it’s unclear, and the camera watches through lenses of broken glass and plastic, found laying waste around it. The swamp isn’t even a swamp at all— it’s an inlet for the dormant power station, reclaimed and transformed into an alternate ecosystem.
Artist Bio
Erin Ginty (she/her) is an artist practicing with clay, video and installation between Walyalup (Fremantle) and Naarm (Melbourne). She is interested in speculative ecologies, the entanglements between nature and industry, and the ways in which we occupy the in-between.