May 6 - June 6
Front Gallery
Emulsions
Erin Hallyburton
Artist Statement
‘Emulsions’ explores processed foods as sculptural materials. Affordable, long-lasting foods are formed with ingredients and industrial processes that are largely unknown and unseen. As a result, these mysterious mixtures provoke strong responses in individuals and in culture more broadly. They are delicious and pleasurable to eat but their obscure origins produce fear and disgust. The consumers’ lack of control and understanding of these substances reflect anxieties about the loss of control of one’s own body. These anxieties mirror and produce anti-fat ideologies that associate fatness with a loss of self-control. Processed foods are often negatively associated with low-income communities and fat bodies. As such, these materials can reveal where class politics and negative perceptions of fatness intersect.
Emulsions moves away from dominant conceptions of the body that favour normativity and predictability by engaging with ambiguous materials. A ‘normal body’ in western culture is understood as conforming to generic proportions, height and weight ranges, shapes, and sizes.The normal or default body is and its characteristics (such as whiteness, heterosexuality, thinness and able-bodiedness) are often taken for granted universally representative. The ‘normal’ body is known, predictable and controllable. This default body is separated from the material qualities that make bodies dynamic, ambiguous and uncontainable. The exhibition centers bodies that fall outside of norms by engaging with an indeterminate, complex, and layered understanding of what bodies and be and do. The exhibition aims to reveal and challenge classist and anti-fat ideologies by engaging with the material and cultural ambiguity of these foods.
Bio
Erin Hallyburton is an artist based in Naarm (Melbourne). Her sculptural practice engages with fat studies and intersectional theory to examine how the conceptual and material limits of the body are produced and negotiated in specific sites. Working with transforming substances, Hallyburton stages processes of decay and seepage within the gallery space. This practice unsettles assumptions that objects and bodies are coherent, discrete, and autonomous.
Hallyburton is a current studio resident at Gertrude Contemporary. She has exhibited at galleries across Australia including Gertrude Contemporary, Kings ARI, Firstdraft, Latrobe Art Institute, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Lilac City Studios and Blindside. In 2022, Hallyburton participated in the Hatched National Graduate Exhibition at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and was received the prestigious Schenberg Art Fellowship.
Back Gallery
The reflection of buildings in other buildings
Emily Norton
artist statement
‘The reflection of buildings in other buildings’ centres around domestic spaces and their replications. Illusory scenes, envisioned as a showroom or stage or screen.
My dreams are often ruled by architecture too. Somewhere that would look completely unfamiliar to me awake is immediately understood as my home when dreaming. Sometimes the buildings are confusing and a source for anxiety; long interconnecting hallways, large flights of stairs, and big big rooms. Sometimes the places are fun, like a ballroom full of bathtubs, arranged in perfect rows.
Like in a dream, the content of the work becomes a regurgitation of everyday life. Things are untethered and rearranged; dollhouses, ads for rentals on real estate apps, medieval paintings, The Sims, 70s magazine spreads, celebrities’ home tours, TV sets, theme parks, furniture stores and our own homes.
I use as many second hand materials as I can, and I use the same materials over again in different ways. Clothes from the op shop, things from Facebook Marketplace, parts of old works and flowers and vegetables from my garden become supplies. I google photos to get printed on fabric, a kind of faux online shopping. A hit of dopamine from late capitalism’s endlessly circulating shiny surfaced image.
Waste materials and pixelated prints interrupt the gloss of the new. Traces of use and time and deterioration resist a seamless surface. Perspective and tactility create a shift in perception. The spaces themselves will always remain a fantasy.
Bio
Emily Norton is a textile artist, residing in Nipaluna/Hobart. Norton completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Visual Art) at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2018, returning in 2022 to complete an Honours year. Norton has exhibited in group shows nationally, including Hatched at PICA, Firstdraft and Carriageworks for Performance Space in addition to a recent solo show at Good Grief last year.
FELTdark
Where My Words Belong
Abbey Murdoch
Artist statement
Abbey Murdoch is a multidisciplinary artist based on Kaurna Land (Adelaide, SA), working across film, installation, and community-engaged practice. Her work centres the lived experiences of public housing communities, exploring how narratives of poverty are constructed, circulated, and resisted.
Grounded in ongoing community consultation, Murdoch’s practice prioritises collaboration and trust, working closely with participants to ensure their voices are not only represented, but meaningfully held. Her work draws on domestic materials, moving image, and immersive installation to reflect the complexities of home, memory, poverty, and displacement.
Where My Words Belong (2026) extends this approach through a film generated from the testimony of a housing trust resident, reconstructed through fragments of Australian media. By reassembling these sources, Murdoch interrogates the tension between lived experience and its public portrayal, revealing both misrepresentation and moments of truth.
Alongside her studio practice, Murdoch facilitates community-led mural projects across councils and schools, and develops participatory workshops with young people. She has participated in the Adelaide Film Festival (2025) and undertaken residencies including the ACE Studio Program (2024) and the Washdog x Illuminate Adelaide residency (2025).