News

Bundit Puangthong has been working on multiple murals for Soi38's new location. Soi38 brings authentic Thai food to Melbourne, with distinct street food style architecture and seating. The restaurant thrived and became an institution. And its fiery salads, raw seafood and moo kata (Thai barbeque) helped kick off a new wave of Thai dining in Melbourne.

The mural has Bundit's distinct mix of bold street art and traditional Thai drawing on a monumental scale, featuring imagery of the monkey god 'Hanuman'.

"The walls are covered in swirling, star-studded murals by Melbourne-based Thai artist Bundit Puangthong, and a stainless steel bar anchors the room, allowing for an expanded drinks menu that includes Thai beers on tap, natural wines by the bottle, and a signature cocktail menu that features gin infused in-house with Thai ingredients like lemongrass, chilli and makrut lime."

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Installation view, Bundit's Soi38 mural, courtesy Chege Mbuthi

We are delighted to share that Belem Lett’s paintings are currently on display in ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ at Ngununggula, alongside works by Rebecca Bauman, Christopher Langton, and Brendan Van Hek.

Using reflective surfaces, sources of light, and sculptural forms, the four artists in ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ share an interest in the properties of colour, and the emotive and visceral reactions that it can evoke. Belem Lett’s joyful paintings have been beautifully curated against mirrored walls, allowing the works to converse across opposite sides of the room.

‘The Pursuit of Happiness’ is current at Ngununggula until 30 March.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Installation view ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’, Ngununggula, 2025, image courtesy Mim Sterling

"For Bridie Gillman’s latest exhibition Sight Lines at Edwina Corlette, Brisbane, the paintings invite a moment of pause. A moment to be in the landscape. Hear the wind and rain. Watch the shadows dance in the foliage. Gillman invited this energy in the repetition of line, form, and colour—translated from the rural typology. Engaging not only the senses we resonate with on an immediate basis (like smell, sight, touch, taste, hear), but also the ones we don’t—memory and emotion—for a tapping into the subconscious.

In her large-scale abstract paintings, Gillman presents her recollections of Bundjalung Country in Northern NSW. The landscape through the Tweed Valley—Brays Creek and Murwillumbah—and her observations of the winding 33km road between the two. One the artist comments is full of lines: ridge lines, fence lines, tree lines, shadow lines, sight lines, tyre lines, dotted lines, and solid lines. These are translated into fresh gestures, textured surfaces, and expressive mark making.

Vast in size at 168 x 213cm, Breathing in a cloud (2024) was one of the first artworks the usually based in Brisbane artist created on her residency in the country. After a time when she was struggling to create in her home studio in the city. Painting in a horse shed in Brays Creek, Gillman observed a sense of working in a micro-climate specific to her location up the mountain. The feeling of being in a cloud with the weather rolling through. The artwork, full of varying shades of grey, buzzing on the canvas, replicates the sense of drizzle and immersion in the elements.

With Gillman’s studio in the heart of Murwillumbah town, she builds on the canvases first worked on in the farm. In Between the lines (2025), 153 x 122cm, the artist has used old pieces of canvas, stitched together for a geometric abstract, in varying shades of green, thick with paint. The viewer may view the artworks as the artist views this rural landscape. Divided, gridded, agricultural, with light peeking through the composition. She comments that each painting starts with a specific memory or observation — holding an initial reference point and isolating the colours. Perhaps the ridge lines or the blues and purples of the eucalyptus mountains.

Paintings like Listening to the grass (2024) and Shifting shapes (2024) are full of dark and textured mark making, quickly worked and full of energy. More so than the artist’s other series of works. Here, the artist reveals her interest in exploring new methodologies of mark-making. What before would be painted out, are now held onto. The artworks reveal the action, the moment of life they are created within, and the moment they set out to capture. Painting, sewing, drawing, and sanding back are all used on the surface. Colour pulled forwards and pulled back, adding depth and that sense of looking through the landscape at the light and shadow that form.

Completely green with darkly worked lines, Listening to the grass evokes being in the landscape during the day. But Shifting shapes represents the isolation of the country at night and the sense you get from being the only person around. Gillman says this work is like night vision; your eyes adjust to the light and the dark. Where things move and push in and out, a vibration. Shapes becoming other. In particular as she notes her isolation in these new places. Away from people. Immersed in the landscape.

Here is where the magic of Sight Lines is revealed as Gillman captures her sense of being light and unburdened, and completely alone, in awe of the environment with time to reflect. We are witness to how art allows for a tapping, an entering, of another realm, where reality and fiction intermingle with memory and emotion."

Written by Emma-Kate Wilson for Art Almanac

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

BRIDIE GILLMAN
That Purple Storm Approaching 2025
oil on linen
61 x 51cm

"10 of the hottest Australian artists to have on your radar"

Written by Yeong Sassall, January 2025

"Dan's work captures the beauty and mystique of the Australian bush, blending figuration and abstraction through layered marks and tones that mimic the natural movement around him. His attention to light and shadow is personally my favourite part of his work.”

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Dan Kyle

Devils Creek Track 2024

oil and mixed media on canvas

85.5 x 127.5 cm

Bundit Puangthong has been teaching crowds of visitors this week in the National Gallery of Victoria's 'Drop By Drawing' sessions. Occurring every Saturday during their summer program, the drawing sessions encourage members of the public to learn new tips, tricks, and drawing techniques from renowned artists, taking inspiration from the Gallery's collection.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Drop By Drawing session at NGV, 2025, courtesy Michael Pham

We are thrilled to congratulate Pia Murphy on being awarded the 2025 Visual Arts Fellowship through the Edward F. Albee Foundation, granting her a month-long residency at The Barn in Montauk, New York. Founded in 1967 by Edward Albee, the foundation supports artists bi-annually, providing time, space, and resources to foster creative development.

For her residency in April, Murphy made the move from her home studio in Birregurra, Victoria to the Montauk studio whereby she explored her abstracted, layered approach to painting in a new and illuminating landscape. Her practice evolves through playful exploration and discovery, reflecting a deep curiosity and delight in unexpected moments. Influenced by the colours and textures of her surrounding landscapes, Murphy’s current focus is painting, building on her background in printmaking and ceramics.

The works produced during this residency will feature in her upcoming solo exhibition, Omnivorous Cast, at Edwina Corlette Gallery from 8–28 October.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Pia Murphy in her studio, courtesy Rhys Lee

Eliza Gosse is exhibiting in Seoul this month, alongside three other international artists in an exhibition titled 'Naive Realism'. The show reinterprets still life painting through architectural scenes from the everyday. The four artists aim to remove meaning from historical objects in order to provoke personal memories and reflections from the viewer.

Eliza Gosse's contribution is two acrylic paintings on canvas, and two gouache paintings on paper, each titled in response to moments of solitude in her home.

The exhibition is open 27 December, 2024 until 2 February, 2025.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

Eliza Gosse

'Kumquats in the Courtyard' 2024

acrylic on canvas

137 x 112 cm

Image Courtesy the artist and Art Space Howha

In a new book dedicated to the creative environments of Sunshine Coast Artists, Stefan Dunlop has been featured. The book includes a stunning collection of photographs from each artists studios, taken by Christine Hall, as well as audio from the artists. Stefan Dunlop's bright, airy workspace as seen in Hall's photographs is in harmony with his bold, colourful, and confident canvases.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

1/ Cover of 'The Studio Project', courtesy Christine Hall

2/ Stefan Dunlop in his studio, courtesy Christine Hall

Congratulations to Vipoo Srivilasa for his exhibition ‘re/JOY’, which is currently at the Australian Design Centre and touring across five states over the next three years. These statues, standing 1.5 metres tall, centre a collection of broken ceramic pieces that were personally significant to a range of families and their experiences of migration. Fragments of teapots, tiles, and bowls from across the world are included in this reimagining of strength, community, and healing. The creation of these figures was inspired by a previous project of Srivilasa’s (of the same name - re/JOY) in Warrnambool, repairing people's broken ceramics that were too sentimental to be thrown away. Srivilasa continuously brings new life and joy to old pottery.

The exhibition is currently on at the Australian Design Centre, Sydney until 19 February 2025. The exhibition will tour Australia from 2025 to 2027.

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Ari Athans whose work ‘A ripple and a rock’, made in collaboration with Urban Art Projects is now installed at Wentworth Point in Sydney.

This work is inspired by sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and shale which make up the ripple valley of Sydney Harbour.

Seeking to re-invoke the soft and natural elements of the area, ‘A ripple and a rock’ signals a place and a point of arrival along the urban coastline. The forms appear to have tumbled together and washed ashore, their shape framing the bay and supporting view lines across the water.

- Ari Athans


IMAGE:

Ari Athans

A ripple and a rock 2024

sandstone, cast aluminium, fabricated steel

dimensions variable