Beyond the Horizon Beyond the Sea Exhibition opening

Exhibition opening celebration and artist talks
Saturday 21 November 1:30 to 4:30 pm

Join us to celebrate the opening of Beyond the Horizon Beyond the Sea and hear from commissioned artists Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello and Mel Deerson in dialogue with curators Karen Annett and Jacqui Shelton.

Artists: Amanda-Lea Bell, Mel Deerson, Aidan Hartshorn, Leonard French, Jennifer Kemarre Martiniello OAM, Michael Riley and Shireen Taweel

Curated by Karen Annett and Jacqui Shelton

Beyond the horizon beyond the sea is an exhibition that finds its starting point in Leonard French’s four-panel coloured glass work Four Seasons, originally commissioned for the La Trobe University campus in Bundoora. Constructed from coloured, French and Belgian hammer-shaped glass, Four Seasons utilises a brutal manipulation of materials to invoke the four European seasons while referencing Christian stained-glass windows, Celtic iconography and nature worship.

This exhibition brings together artists that utilise glass, light, colour and fragmentation as both material matter and transformative vision, drawing on inherited tradition and iconography to subvert and challenge dominant ideologies. Reflecting on Leonard French’s assertion that 'all art is religious' the exhibition explores First Nations, queered, diasporic, regional and marginalised approaches to spirituality and cultural practice. It foregrounds gestures that transform received narratives, filtering meaning through alternative lenses to disrupt perception and open space for alternative ways of seeing.

The exhibition title gestures toward spaces outside the centre (geographically and conceptually) where fixed binaries and linear time give way to fluidity and complexity. The artists invite viewers to engage with storytelling, spirituality and cultural practices that resist singular truths and affirm diverse ways of knowing.