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FRONT GALLERY
BOTTLED ZOO
by Barek
As a child I spent a lot of time alone exploring the freshwater creeks, salt water mangroves and surrounding parks.
It became a daily afternoon activity to go out hunting creatures for my ‘zoos’. After collecting fish, bugs, yabbies, shells, baby eels, lizards, frog eggs and all manner of creatures, I’d take them home, line them up, draw them, research what they were before making tiny labels for my ‘zoos’. Wearing an old costume helmet I would set up my zoo and invite family, neighbors and friends to view them while I gave information on each.
Most of my ‘zoos’ didn’t last very long (before the captives unfortunate demise) so quickly I had a great skull and bone collection. In later years I began creating my creatures from sticks, strings and bones before I moved onto digital pets like Tamagotchi and Pokémon. While the outcomes were often grim, I learnt how to better keep creatures and appreciate their lives. It taught me about death and loss. It taught me about change and evolution. It taught me compassion.
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BACK GALLERY
MAKE BELIEVE
by Alfred Liu
Wombats, Mist, Power lines and Elder Things.
I spent most of my childhood in China, before returning to Australia when I was seven. I could only speak a little English and in a foreign land that was home, which didn't make sense to me, I found refuge in the world of make believe. My childhood felt like being in three worlds at once. China. Australia. And the world of my imagination.
In my work, these three worlds are merged —what I love about Australia; the romanticism of the east; and the escapism of fantasy and science-fiction.
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SIDE GALLERY
DRAW THAT OUT
by Julio Brenes
When you meet someone for a coffee there is always that thrill,
the excitement of where the conversation will take you.
Words come out of your mouth and sips of coffee provide the fuel and the pause. We talk but we also become good listeners.
I take joy from the ink being absorbed by the paper cup. I’d like to think that the ink is flowing through my hand onto the surface. I am never sure what my caffeinated hand will show me that day, even though I have some consistencies in my work, sometimes I have no idea how the final drawing will look like. I draw, I drink and I listen. Then I use all that to draw that out.
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UPSTAIRS GALLERY
GOOD TIMES
by Coco Meacham
Coco’s works for Good Times celebrate some significant middle class life events - an overseas trip to Sri Lanka, moving house and visiting New York. The drawings are a meditation on the spaces we move through, an elevation of the everyday. The process of making these laborious works, at the time or in the studio, is also an act of remembering for the artist; an elaborate travelogue.
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