Where ocean meets the sky, where earth meets its spirits.
Unearthing and exploring water, sky, earth and natural realms, and the spiritual realms beyond them. A joint exhibition with a cohesive diversity of mediums between Hive favourite painter Margaret Delahunty Spencer, returning sculptor Mary van den Broek and newcomer, early career ceramicist Natasha Chant.
Margaret Delahunty Spencer continues to investigate the gesture—seeking to capture its essence rather than simply illustrating a subject. My work explores the exhilarating space where instinct guides movement, where gestures emerge from a subconscious state rather than deliberate construction. This state of suspension is timeless, sometimes easily accessed and other times requiring greater preparation. It is a pursuit that will continue to evolve throughout my life, deepening as I grow as an artist.
In Realms, I explore the different environments I inhabit—both physical and emotional—and the ways they inspire and shape my creative practice. Each work is a reflection of the spaces I move through, from the intimate and domestic to the expansive and untamed. These realms are layered with memory, sensation, and imagination, blurring the boundaries between observation and interpretation. Through bold gestures and a playful abstraction, I invite the viewer to step into these spaces with me, to find familiarity, wonder, and discovery within them.
Mary van den Broek, also of Ballarat, exhibits ‘Spheniscidaes Waddle’, a family of penguin sculptures in powder coated perforated steel of varying dimensions. Inspiration for Spheniscidaes Waddle is tied to a hope that we as well as penguins continue respecting and adapting to our changing climate. Hopefully the surprise of seeing a material commonly used for fabricating heating flue concealer panels in a new penguin shape may draw attention to the possible future survival of penguins and other species that prefer a cooler climate, including humans.
Shadows thrown by the work are integral to each piece as they draw attention to the passage of time and inevitability of change that underpin our world.
Emerging ceramicist Natasha Chant is getting noticed and for good reason. With a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) RMIT University in 2015, Natasha has already been a finalist in several notable ceramic awards including Clunes Ceramic Award, and the North Queensland Ceramic Award both in 2022 and the Fishers Ghost Art Award in 2023.
Her striking matte, unglazed ceramic forms are inspired by various mythological and historical records and stories. “I am particularly drawn to the intersection of history, mythology and legend, and have been creating a series of sculptures exploring this idea.”
In 2023 I visited the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, to see the Stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar. An ancient land that has had continual human settlements since Neolithic times, the Megalithic standing stones have born witness to thousands of years of human life, their presence a constant as generations have come and gone like mist in a valley.
The various stories and legends around the Odin Stone, once a part of the Stones of Stenness, were the inspiration for my Standing Stone sculptures. Intertwining history, legend and myth through a biomorphic, minimalist lens, my sculptures are an abstracted, contemporary response to these ancient monuments, inviting contemplation of the threads binding us to the past, the primal impulse of creation, and our fleeting yet profoundly rooted connection to the land.
The Gaia and Terra series are in a style of work is best described as biomorphic abstraction. Originating from the Greek word “bios” (life), and “morphe” (form), the term “biomorphic art” refers to abstract portrayals of the natural world.
Drawn to the flowing lines and curves found in nature, to the elegant lines of the human form, rolling hills and bends in a river, and with experience as a doula the beauty and primal strength in every woman also inspires. Natasha’s process is quite instinctive and somewhat unconscious, similarly to how surrealist art reflects the subconscious, created with a level of automation. My hands take over and in conversation with the clay, a form begins to emerge.
Each piece I make is hand built with coils. It allows me to create the sinuous curves that I love, and to push the clay to its limits. I want to find that place of perfect balance, where the form is taken to its furthest limit before I bring it back and realign the centre of gravity so it will hold itself upright.
Beauty in imperfection, balance and instability. I do not want to make something that is perfectly aligned, I am far more interested in the tension created, the beautiful imperfection that elevates something beyond the mundane into something that will continue to draw the eye.
‘Realms’ runs throughout April 2025, and opens on Saturday the 5th at 2pm. Find the links and enjoy.
Enquire to Karen on 0417 116 216.
