Sue Davis
@artclubnorthcote
Trash Season 2025
Discarded Polystyrene
4 pieces various sizes
Trash Season explores the ecological crisis affecting us today caused by habitat loss, pollution and climate change. One consequence of this crisis is the disruption of seasonal patterns, which is throwing the interdependent life cycles of plants and animals out of sync and destabilizing the human communities that rely on them economically, socially, and culturally. Some of these new seasons are entirely novel and human-made - such as Bali’s annual ‘trash season,’ when, between November and March, tidal currents deposit vast amounts of plastic on the island’s shores.
As its title suggests, my work Trash Season, responds directly to this phenomenon. Constructed from polystyrene, a material that originates in fossilised marine life, is transformed through geological processes into oil and then chemically engineered into a pollutant with an indefinite lifespan. Ubiquitous and buoyant, polystyrene is one of the most persistent forms of ocean pollution and epitomises the destructive trajectory of human intervention.
Encapsulating the entanglement of human culture and environmental destruction, Trash Season becomes a site of grief, rage and a fragile sense of hope. Into this debris, I have carved fragile flannel flowers, an endangered species threatened by climate change, transforming waste into testimony and remembrance.
Sue Davis is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country whose work explores the ecological crisis. Over the years, she has worked with various media including soft sculpture, drawing, collage, textiles, signs, photograms, and carved polystyrene installations, the materiality integral to the themes. Alongside her practice, she has worked in theatre design, prop and costume making, and community arts across Australia and Europe. For the past fourteen years, Sue has run Art Club Northcote, a children’s art studio fostering a contemporary approach to creativity and imagination which has recently moved to its new location at Nightingale, Preston.
Kate Gabb
@kate_gabb_art
I am a multidisciplinary artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), working across textiles, glass, ceramics, and painting. In this exhibition, I present a collection of small sculptures, tapestries and oil paintings from my series It’s a Wonderful Life that convey whimsy, colour, and playfulness — an antidote to the climate catastrophe. Each piece has been created from recycled children’s wooden puzzles and thread, reflecting the fun and joy their previous owners once enjoyed. In keeping with my ethos, I use sustainable materials whenever possible.
Zan Griffith
https://www.zangriffith.com/
@zangriffith
Notes from a Somersaulting Clown. 2025
8 A4 paper notes
Notes from a Somersaulting Clown -a back issue. 2025
Paper Zine
I am a Melbourne/Naarm-based artist who lives and works on Wurundjeri and Bunurong Country. I have a special interest in the politics of public city space, and my work traverses multiple mediums, with performance as a core element. Notes from a Somersaulting Clown documents my most recent performance work and the shifts that occur in the process of making. The work takes the form of eight sequential A4 paper notes capturing both photos and written reflections of the performance piece. I have also created a small zine, Notes from a Somersaulting Clown – a back issue, that logs this documentation.
My performance work begins with somersaults through city spaces as a way of mirroring the absurdity of global politics right now. I am also interested in the politics of my ageing female body taking up space in the city in this playful way. In the notes, I document the shifts and unexpected turns that occur throughout the process of making.
Rebecca Jones
rebecca@rebeccajones.com.au
@rebeccajonesart
Park Life series, 2025, 2025, 335mm x 305mm, watercolour, acrylic and cardboard,
For this body of artwork I started with a song by Blur. Parklife is a funny and sincere portrait of daily life in 1990s Britain. Its observational storytelling is both genuine and knowingly theatrical and celebrates the charm of habitual routines while acknowledging the mix of boredom and delight they carry. The song affectionately captures the sense of drifting through life, where aimlessness can feel both freeing and quietly empty. Rather than mourning that drift, Parklife celebrates the minutiae of everyday existence and the understated poetry of simply being among other people.
In reviewing the everyday, I worked with what was already around me. I returned to an artwork from my earlier series, The Wall of Considered Disruptive Thoughts, and began integrating found materials into new compositions. I included some of the drawing methods that I teach in my Monday classes, focusing on negative and positive space, active edges, and the quiet histories that objects and bodies carry. I worked with watercolour and acrylic: one translucent, one opaque. They come into productive conflict that creates a depth where what is open and what is hidden. Rather than resting on a single surface, the work holds multiple visual planes at once. Like the song, this Parklife series observes the ordinary with affection, revealing complexity in what is usually passed over. The result is a playfully direct celebration of the materials at hand, the active and engaging language of drawing, and the dimensional framing structures that hold them.
Jacinta Maude
jacintamaude.com.au
@jacinta.maude
I am a Melbourne/Naarm based artist working across sculpture, installation and painting. For Tin Pot Tactics: Feast and Flourish, I present two distinct bodies of work - The Dance and two paintings, Transient Symmetries #1 and Transient Symmetries #2 - distinct in material and form, yet united through their exploration of selfhood and discovery within liminal spaces. My work reflects on how identity is shaped through place, memory and the persistence of small, tender acts.
The Dance (part of the Mothers’ Milk Series)
2025
Porcelain, clay, PVA glue, gesso, found tea towels, salvaged wood, brackets
58 x 9 x 18 cm
The Dance traces the psychological weight of quiet labours — those unseen yet deeply felt acts of care that sustain daily life. In this work, I examine the delicate tension between intimate domestic responsibilities and their broader societal devaluation. Grounded in materiality and the politics of the home, I find meaning in what has been discarded, honouring the histories and emotions embedded within.
The ceramic and found-object forms rest in silent defiance. Their irregular, tactile presence resists the polish of minimalism, instead gesturing toward the slow, repetitive rhythms of care, acts that are rarely neat or celebrated, yet remain relentless and essential. Drawing from the cadence of domestic life and familial connection, my practice centres the overlooked gestures and materials of everyday existence.
Transient Symmetries #1
2025
Oil on board
Transient Symmetries #2
2025
Oil on board
For me, painting is both a personal meditation and a shared act of endurance - a way to make space for beauty, uncertainty, and connection in a noisy world. It is a calm process that translates emotion into colour and form, offering a quiet balance. Through blends of colour and geometric shapes, I explore how painting can express the shifting and often contradictory states of being. I use tones of purple, pink, and orange to represent in-between spaces, moments that sit between clarity and confusion, certainty and doubt, self and other. The layered surfaces echo the complexity of lived experience, resisting simple resolution and inviting reflection. Geometry brings both structure and tension to my work, holding together the movement of layered pigments.
Each painting develops intuitively, guided by feeling rather than a fixed plan. This openness to process values imperfection, persistence and care as creative strengths. Like the Tin Pot Women Collective, which celebrates humour, solidarity and quiet resilience, my work searches for stillness within movement.
Marguerite Ton
Aspirational, 2018
Oil on slate
We Got There, 2018
Oil on slate
Eyeball Me, 2018
Oil on slate
I am a Naarm/Melbourne-based painter and my practice explores memory, emotion and the shared humanity found within historical imagery. My works Aspirational, We Got There, and Eyeball Me are inspired by archival photographs discovered in old books that left a lasting warmth and curiosity within me. Painted on found slate using a refined tonal palette, these pieces meditate on the human condition - resilience, joy and the quiet strength that carries individuals through change.
Drawing from my experiences working alongside newly arrived immigrants, I reflect on themes of belonging and aspiration, translating these stories into painterly gestures that merge personal empathy with collective history. Through this body of work, I invite reflection not only on the past but also on the enduring hope that connects generations seeking a new life.
