In 2023, Carriageworks hosts the NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging), an initiative of Artspace and Create NSW. As part of the program, six finalists – Maddison Gibbs, Morgan Hogg, Nadia Odlum, EJ Son, Natalie Quan Yau Tso and Min Wong – will exhibit recent work in a group exhibition. The recipient received a $30,000 fellowship from Create NSW to undertake a self-directed program of professional development.
The 2023 recipient is Morgan Hogg.
Thu 27 Jul – Sun 27 Aug
10am – 5pm (Wed – Sun)
Exhibition open
Maddison Gibbs
Morgan Hogg
Nadia Odlum
EJ Son
Natalie Quan Yau Tso
Min Wong
Alexie Glass-Kantor
Executive Director, Artspace
Talia Linz
Curator, Artspace
Sarah Rose
Associate Curator and Executive Assistant, Artspace
Stephanie Berlangieri
Associate Curator, Carriageworks
Join us on Thu 3 Aug, 6-10pm for a night of performance and workshops to coincide with the exhibition.
Further details + registrations here.
Join us for artist talks facilitated by the curatorium, Sat 12 Aug, 11am – 12pm.
Register below:
The 2023 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging) is developed and curated by Artspace, Sydney, in partnership with the NSW Government through Create NSW, and presented with Carriageworks.
Installation view, 2023 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging), Carriageworks, Sydney. Photo: Anna Kucera
Morgan Hogg has reconstructed a traditional o’ora, a laying of dowries, arranging gifts of bedding across two empty chairs. The installation creates a space for the artist’s ancestral spirits by weaving together an intergenerational archive of family heirlooms and textiles. The video work Ariki Vaine depicts the artist performing a storytelling dance. She replicates the movement of palm trees, ocean and land, expressing human entanglement with nature, and the central role of matrilineal knowledge-sharing in Polynesian culture.
The host comprises spirit-like sculptures made from the branches of Mistletoe trees – semi-parasitic plants that can be found growing among the branches of host Eucalyptus trees. The lifecycle of the Mistletoe tree symbolises the dual condition of living within settler colonialism whilst maintaining culture. In Black Magic, Gibbs has collected roots, leaves, sticks, nuts and flowers found on Country in the aftermath of so-called ‘natural’ disasters. The splatter method is a continuation of cultural practice and the works have a restorative function.
EJ Son’s work combines the languages of commercial and museological display with the domestic to merge public and private realms. Ceramic vessels resembling bodily forms are stacked on brightly lit shelves and interspersed with personal objects, forming a towering installation that responds to existing architecture. In the corner, an oversized teddy bear unnervingly rocks side to side, surveilling its audience. Nearby, a ladies bag is transformed into a furry symbol laden with psychoanalytic associations.
In 2022, Nadia Odlum visited Playscape in Atlanta, USA, a playground designed by sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988). Over a period of three days, Odlum observed public engagement with Noguchi’s geometric structures, documenting play cycles and social interactions in a series of drawings. The drawings are presented within a sculptural installation, which becomes a prompt and a record of the ways art can enable playful exploration of public space.
Natalie Quan Yau Tso uses personal, bodily boundaries as metaphors for political boundaries. She performs acts that cross borders traditionally defining the inside and outside of the body, such as cleansing, eating and peeling. The biological substances involved – saliva, hair and skin – are collected and used as material for her work. Her process is guided by the layers of the body as a meeting of timelines and histories, bringing forth contradictions that emerge from her migratory experience.
Min Wong's Namaslay part II takes the form of a stylised interior space populated with sculptures that the artist refers to as ‘oversized spiritual décor’. The sculptures are intended as functional objects, housing items associated with spiritual and self-help movements, including crystals, books, plants and weights. Together, the installation investigates the methods we use to achieve personal growth and improvement in a society that increasingly sees wellbeing as a profit-making industry.