BEAUTIFUL TENSIONS: GRAY STREET WORKSHOP CELEBRATES FORTY YEARS

Our opening on May 8th 2025 at the Jamfactory was a triumph! Huge thanks to all the folks at the Jamfactory! Thanks to Julie Ewington, long-time friend of GSW, for opening the show. We have a special community here in South Australia; a generous, supportive, diverse and loving bunch of creatives. Thanks so much for coming out and being there in person to celebrate the past forty years of Gray Street Workshop and launch our new work! What a crowd!

This mammoth exhibition is essentailly four solo exhibitions rolled into one. Four substantial bodies of new work by each of the current partners of Gray Street; Sue Lorraine, Jess Dare, Lisa Furno and myself. You’ll need a packed lunch to take it all in when you visit. It finishes up at the Jamfactory Adelaide on July 6th and then begins on a three year nationwide tour, supported by Visions Australia. I’ll keep you posted on Instagram!

There is a beautiful book Beautiful Tensions: Gray Street Workshop celebrates forty years written by Anne Brennan, designed by Rachel Harris and published by Wakefield Press. It’s so beautifully illustrated and gives intimate insight into the heart of the workshop, its history and especially into the evolution of the actual creative development of the works in the show. WONDERFUL !!!! You can get you hands on a copy through the Jamfactory shop!

Thanks also to Create SA and Creative Australia for supporting the development of this special project.

It’s 2025

Some how I blinked and 2025 snuck in with barely a sound.

During 2024, I re-presented The Arrangements: assembling nature in a solo exhibition at Funaki Gallery in Melbourne and titled it The Rearrangements. It was an opportunity for me to re-contextualise the work within a contemporary domestic setting of a salon-style apartment/gallery. The original body of work was made during 2022/ 2023 in response to a year-long residency at Carrick Hill, an English style manor house and formal garden nestled in the Adelaide foothills. I examined plant /human relationships largely through a post-colonial lens.

Many compelling themes arose from the research influenced by the schism between the highly managed formal garden and the remnant endemic bushland that rims the site. Over time, I became acutely aware of the compelling tensions between them and put very simply, the ways we seem to intervene in and ‘bend’ nature to suit our needs. Not a square centimetre remains untouched.

So many struggles of conscience arose; where does our understanding of ‘natural’ and cultivated landscape, conservation, preservation, management and ‘ownership’ originate? Why is there such scant documentation of pre-colonial history? These questions are ever-expanding.

The works were a direct response to these conundrums. They are an interweaving of old and new threads, definitely not meant as answers or solutions.

2024 was also an intense and extraordinary year on making. I came to know the value of making from the heart, renew my vows in a way to this primal drive.

I will always examine my life and art practice through a maker’s lens. This way of seeing and being in the world has gained such personal gravity in recent years. The movement it creates enables a better connection to core imperatives- including listening to, learning about and caring for the land I occupy. One step at a time, and thinking beyond my own lifespan.

There is no actual gap ever in arts practice; life pours in and out everyday, it’s a continuum.

Gray Street Workshop turns forty in 2025 and we are celebrating. In April ‘Beautiful Tensions’, an exhibition of the work of the four current partners will open at the JamFactory and go on to tour nationally for the next three years. We have all made significant bodies of work that will come together in one space. Along the way we have gathered each week to share in our process and progress. It is an incredible experience to mentor and be mentored by your closest colleagues. The Jamfactory Adelaide is playing host . There will be a most beautiful, quirky, enlightening book written by Anne Brennan and designed by Rachel Harris of Bit Scribbly Design. And there will be a movie and and and and!!!! Cant wait!

The show opens to the public April 22nd in the main gallery of the Jamfactory. I hope you all get a chance to join us for all the celebrations. The official opening is on May 8th with the book launch and artist talk on the May 10th.

Forty years! Hey! Still vital, still absolutely committed to practice, still learning, still making!

I am thrilled to announce that Gray Street Workshop has been awarded a Ruby Award for “Outstanding Contribution by a Group or Organisation. What a way to celebrate our 40th Anniversary!

I am a proud co-founder of this artist run initiative that has enriched not only my life, but many other practising artists locally, nationally and internationally. We are one of Australia’s longest running independent artist workshops!

Our sincere thanks to Margaret Worth for the nomination and CreateSA and the South Australian Government for their support.

Click on the link below for more information about the award.