Materialities explores contemporary art through transdisciplinary practices, focusing on the intersection of material objects, energy, human labour, and theories of value, while extending to diasporic and traditional knowledge.
We are leading artists active in national and international arts sectors, emphasizing the importance of material practices. Our projects aim to preserve cultural and biological diversity, addressing climate change and global inequality through diverse aesthetic investigations.
As educators, we challenge economic rationalisation and connect thinkers and artists on themes like sustainability, global inequality, material histories, threatened designs, the handcrafted, indigenous crafts, decoloniality, material ecologies, and climate crises. We support contemporary art that blends traditional methodologies with innovative approaches to materiality.
Our art practices reflect the collective histories of their materials, embodying materialism as symbiotic agency.
Feel free to contact us for projects and collaborations.
Dr Michael Doolan, Cautionary Note, (Glow Winter Arts Festival, Central Park, Malvern East, Victoria).
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LinkProject Lead: Dr Michael Doolan
Funding and support: Stonnington City Council, Victoria
This scene and its highly charged colouration presents a feeling of 鈥渘ow鈥. The work鈥檚 immediacy is like the single cell from a stop action movie suddenly arrested at its key junction or an illustration by Gustave Dor茅 who鈥檚 seminal works were well-known for setting the keynote for the fairy tale. However, Cautionary Note鈥檚 fairy tale remains intact. The work is conceived to invoke its own fiction. It is intended to immerse the viewer in an abundance of readings by posing questions.
Can the observer bring this scenario to its rightful conclusion?
Will they become rescuer or bird, and if so who will utter this transitional narrative鈥檚 opening lines鈥?听
Project lead: Dr Newell Harry
Funding and support: 17th Istanbul Biennial (陌KSV), KADIST, Australia Council for the Arts
Collaborators: 听
Sul Mare is an ongoing iterative installation, originally commissioned through support of KADIST Foundation and ISKV for the Housed in a 15th-century Turkish Hammam, conceived in response to the site鈥檚 architecture, Ingres The Turkish Bath (1852), and Edward Said鈥檚 incisive reflections in Orientalism (1978), the ensemble of archival materials bookends two decades of political and racial shifts in Australia, spanning the wider Indo-Pacific, and the artist鈥檚 family鈥檚 migration fleeing apartheid in 1971. Spread across three rooms of the in Istanbul鈥檚 Fatih district, the installation begins with the Whitlam's government鈥檚 cessation of the White Australia Policy in 1975 and extends to the mid-1990s, marked by the 1996 election of John Howard and Pauline Hanson. Since its inception, Sul Mare has been expanded and adapted for presentation in two additional institutional exhibitions: (2023), and Esperanto, Murray Art Museum Albury (2023).
Dr Alex Gawronski, Threshold, 2017 (PVC, steel, plywood, mdf, bitumen, resin, acrylic and enamel paint). Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), Sydney. Photo: Felicity Jenkins
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LinkProject lead: Dr Alex Gawronski
Funding and suuport: AGNSW, MCA, Carriage Works (+ Austalia Council for the Arts, Arts NSW)
Curators: Wayne Tunnicliffe & Anneke Jaspers (AGNSW); Blair French (MCA); Nina Miall & Lisa Havilah
Threshold was one of three interrelated installations collectively titled 鈥楪hosts鈥 commissioned for the inaugural iteration of 鈥楾he National: New Australian Art鈥 in 2017. This survey exhibition took place across Sydney鈥檚 AGNSW, MCA and Carriage Works. The three installations swapped trompe-l鈥檈oil reconstructions of specific architectural details of each space. Drawing from legacies of institutional critique, they collectively alluded to the economic, socio-political and historical contexts that define them today. For example, Threshold is a 1:1 reproduction of Carriage Works鈥 industrial columns. These mimic, albeit in stark aesthetic contrast, the AGNSW鈥檚 own neoclassical columns. Speaking across time and space, in this instance the industrial heritage of Carriage Works - once the Southern Hemisphere鈥檚 largest rail manufacturing depot - is uncannily re-housed in the AGNSW as a temple of High Culture. Curiously, Carriage Works and the AGNSW were practically contemporary: the worlds of labor and cultural delectation are not so far removed as one always underscores the other.
Dr Madeleine Kelly, Pelican Analogues (detail) 2023, oil and casein on polyester, 150 x 110 cm. Private collection.
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LinkProject lead: Dr Madeleine Kelly
Works featured in The National 4: Australian Art Now, Art Gallery of NSW (24 March 鈥 23 July)
Funding and support: The Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW)
Curator: Beatrice Gralton 鈥 Senior Curator of Contemporary Australian Art
For this show the Art Gallery of NSW commissioned听.听The National is a biennial survey of Australian contemporary art. The theme was painting, informed by geometric abstraction and Byzantine mosaics, with symbolic motifs. In听Middle-earth听(2023), porcelain reliefs based on die cast moulds for metal fittings hung mid-air, inverting their function. Instead of connecting, the recto and verso of each panel face out in opposition. Painted surrogates of the sculptures appeared in my paintings. Tai Spruyt writes, 鈥Pelican analogues听(2023)听is similarly inspired by Kelly鈥檚 time in Ravenna, borrowing the form of a helix that appeared in many of the Byzantine mosaics. Within this spiralling framework Kelly depicts a human figure embracing pelican alongside abstracted nasturtium leaves. The intertwining bodies undergo an alchemical transformation, assuming elements of the others鈥 form while they float听 against a backdrop of eddying currents and visceral layers鈥櫶
Dr Oliver Smith, Finger Ring, 2024 (ue-shibuichi, 40% Ag: 60% Cu), Arm Ring, 2024 (wrought iron), Neck Ring, 2024 (brass). Photography: Isobel Markus-Dunworth.
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LinkProject lead: Dr Oliver Smith
Funding and support: The Australian Design Centre and Galerie Handwerk Munich
Curators: Lisa Cahill, ADC Director and Helen Britton, Contemporary Jeweller
Oliver Smith鈥檚 work features as part of 鈥楾he Familiar in the Foreign鈥 at Galerie Handwerk in Munich between March 12 and April 17 2025.
Oliver鈥檚 work deploys a deep understanding of metallurgy and draws on a family lineage of jewellers and metalsmiths.
Curated by Lisa Cahill and Helen Britton the exhibition, presented by the Australian Design Centre, explores themes of cultural identity, environmental concerns, and connections to place.
Artists: Virginia Keft, Carly Takari Dodd, David Doyle, Lisa Waup, Dominic White, Nicole Monks with Jenine Boeree and Yarra Monks, Lucy Simpson, Lola Greeno, Bic Tieu, Carlier Makigawa, Helen Britton with Justine McKnight, John Parkes, Liam Benson, Melissa Cameron, Oliver Smith, Rox De Luca, Saraj Elson, Zoe Veness.
Salote Tawale, I remember you, Carriageworks, Sydney. Photography by Zan Wimberley.
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LinkProject lead: Salote Tawale
Funding and support: Creative Australia
I remember you is an ambitious presentation of work including sculpture, painting and video that considers how identity is formed through memory. Drawing from the artist鈥檚 own recollections, the exhibition is presented across two spaces at Carriageworks. No Location, an almost 14-metre-long bamboo raft, is moored in the Public Space, while in Bay 21, paintings, sculpture and karaoke are bought together in an installation that is conceived as a 鈥榤emory bank鈥. Based on the material of life 鈥 Tawale鈥檚 life 鈥 I remember you acknowledges the subjectivity of experience to explore the relationship between the individual and the collective.
Amber Hammad, Acrylic, watercolour and spray paints, tea and coffee stains, inks, powdered pigments, glitter, glue and varnish on canvas, 106.8 x 106.5 cm
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LinkProject lead: Amber Hammad (HDR student)
Through this self-portrait, I investigate and encourage new conversations around the complexities of being a middle-class, middle-aged Muslim migrant Pakistani鈥揂ustralian artist. I try to challenge and reimagine the visibility and invisibility, representation and misrepresentation, and veiling and unveiling of Muslim female bodies within the Islamophobic West (where I now live), as well as the Islamised patriarchal cultures (where I come from). Building on the idea of feminist willfulness (from Sara Ahmed鈥檚 book听Living a feminist life) I embrace and celebrate some of the clich茅s associated with my identity such as headscarf, Islamic art, Arabic script cricket. (2022)
Project lead:听Eytan Messiah (HDR student)
Support: HQ Group, Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, Tamsin Johnson
Situated on the South, East and West walls of the top floor of the heritage-listed Pacific House in Melbourne鈥檚 CBD, the tiled mural for HER Rooftop dialogues with the characters, ornaments and stories of its 1903 establishment. The full mural comprises 280 hand painted ceramic tiles and another 200 beautifully glazed subway border tiles from Olde English Tiles in Sydney. The original five-storey building at 268-270 Lonsdale Street is a 鈥減articularly fine architectural design with the Romanesque-inspired arches underneath a deep overhanging cornice.鈥澨 The building鈥檚 lasting style, particularly its fa莽ade, arched windows and ornate mouldings were strong features in guiding my design. The cigar and cigarette manufacturers Sniders and Abrahams who built and first occupied the building provide some fascinating motifs to explore in the mural. References to the tobacco plant and smoking run through the design. William Barak, who died a month before the building was complete, was an important painter and Wurundjeri spokesman for the Kulin Nation traditional owners of the land where the building stands. Barak along with the White Gum feature in the design.
Project lead: Jingru Mai (Moira) (HDR student)
My Erotic Possession(s), the artist鈥檚 Honours graduation work, is a series of sculptural installations in glass, ceramics, and fabric, incorporating silicone, metal, and vibrators. Many female artists in China struggle with the conflict between societal norms and personal identity. Rooted in Confucian values, traditional Chinese marriage prioritizes male lineage, positioning women as subordinate. Love, tied to heterosexual reproduction, is widely accepted, rendering other relationships invisible and labeling sexually aware women as morally flawed. This work challenges such restrictive moral codes, creating a space deemed improper within traditional Chinese values鈥攚here women reclaim control over their bodies and the sexual scene.
Project lead: Michael Lindeman听(HDR student)
Support:听Sullivan + Strumpf, Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore
Artists Anonymous听is part exhibition, part group therapy鈥攚ry, humorous, and uncomfortably familiar.
The project reimagines the gallery as a therapeutic space, shaped by Irvin D. Yalom鈥檚 ideas on personal transformation, Freud鈥檚 writing on repression and regression, and echoes of Nicolas Bourriaud鈥檚 Relational Aesthetics.
Text anchors the presentation, which features a large illuminated changeable letter sign, an installation referencing artist archetypes, absurd painted lists for the 鈥榗ulture industry,鈥 and fictional certificates turned registered businesses. These imagined threads extend into the gallery further, where characters from fictional writing are brought to life as performance.
The project also includes finger paintings and text on mirror鈥攁n equal emphasis on cerebral and physical gestures. The听Regression Paintings听embrace amateur aesthetics to reflect art world anxieties. Tied to phenomenology, the boundary between spectator and subject dissolves, proposing social, institutional, and self-critique.
Artists听Anonymous听reframes the gallery as a site of hybrid therapy and quiet resistance.
Dr Madeleine Kelly
Materialites Cluster Chair
