Glass, ochre, iron and mud:Anindita Banerjee, Deanne Gilson, Aaron Hoffman and Todd Johnson by Deakin University Art Gallery

Glass, ochre, iron and mud

Deakin University Art Gallery 14 April – 6 June 2025

Anindita Banerjee

Deanne Gilson

Aaron Hoffman

Todd Johnson

It is with great pleasure that the Deakin University Art Gallery presents Glass, ochre, iron and mud as part of Deakin University’s 50th anniversary celebrations throughout 2025. This exhibition marks the tenth collaborative showcase between the Deakin University Art Gallery and the School of Communication and Creative Arts, bringing together four accomplished alumni artists from our Higher Degree by Research program: Anindita Banerjee, Deanne Gilson, Aaron Hoffman, and Todd Johnson. These distinguished artists have been invited to share their current projects, offering a window into the diverse perspectives emerging from Deakin’s vibrant creative research community. Though each artist has developed their approach and inquiries independently over recent years, this exhibition reveals their shared exploration of the complexities of contemporary identity, material knowledges, and profound understandings of place. As we celebrate half a century of Deakin’s contribution to education and culture, we invite you to experience practices that exemplify the depth and breadth of creative research cultivated within our institution.

James Lynch Curator, Art Collection and Galleries Deakin University

Installation view

Deakin University Art Gallery

photography by Polo Jimenez

Installation view Deakin University Art Gallery photography by Polo Jimenez

Installation view

Deakin University Art Gallery

photography by Polo Jimenez

Anindita Banerjee

Anindita Banerjee relocated to Naarm Melbourne in 2010, leaving her career in IT to pursue the creative arts. After completing both undergraduate studies and a PhD at Deakin University in 2020, Banerjee has established herself as an artist, curator, and public art specialist. Her extensive research has created a platform and a context for emerging artists and cultural producers from the South Asian diaspora in Australia. Banerjee’s wider practice explores migration experiences on the unceded lands of First Peoples in southeast Australia, drawing inspiration from her childhood memories of life in a remote West Bengal village, including its rituals, ceremonies, and traditions.

Banerjee explores the connections between her family residences in Naarm Melbourne and on Wadawurrung Country in Ballarat, linking them to her ancestral home near Kolkata. She uses the shared architectural legacies of these former British colonies as a foundation for her investigations. With her work partially inspired by the urban myth that the original plans for Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station and Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Bombay Station) were accidentally switched.

Third Space (2024) is a collection of black and white photographic prints showing Banerjee dressed in traditional attire throughout an ornate Victorian mansion. The artist appears as though she is visiting a grand hotel in a faraway place, positioned among dark wooden staircases, decorative tiles, and elaborate wrought iron balustrades. However, this project was actually conceived, photographed, and exhibited at Linden New Art in St. Kilda, Melbourne. Currently serving as a contemporary art space for the City of Port Phillip, the building is historically significant as an exceptional example of residential architecture by Alfred Kursteiner, a productive Victorian-era architect from the late 19th century. The Linden mansion was originally built as a residence for prominent businessman and Jewish community leader Moritz Michaelis, whose family owned the property until 1957. After changing hands, it operated for several decades as an upscale hotel called Linden Court.

In Third Space Banerjee appears as a wandering visitor carrying a distinctive ceremonial mask, which can only be acquired through family and community inheritance in her ancestral village. Occupying a space between tourist and local, Banerjee seems displaced from both time and location in these images. In 2024, Banerjee named a significant curatorial touring exhibition across regional Australia Epar Opar, which roughly translates from Bengali as ‘both sides of the street’. The term Epar Opar also serves as a metaphor of a river, suggesting the simultaneous existence of something always pertaining two sides, representing not an either/or but rather a continuum of multiple identities and perspectives.1

1. The artist in conversation with the author 22 January 2025.

Anindita Banerjee

Third Space 2024

This work explores the memories that this physical place is perhaps holding onto. It stands as a vessel for the intertwined stories of a family home, the diverse tapestry of travellers who once sought refuge within its walls, and the echoes of a time of this unceded land so cherished by First Peoples. As migrants, we carry with us thoughts, memories, and experiences from distant lands. I wonder if those who once inhabited this space, especially when it functioned as a hotel, also clung to their own capsules of reality, intertwining the threads of our shared human journey.

Anindita Banerjee

pages 12-13

Installation view of Third Space exhibition at Linden New Art 2024, curated by Anindita Banerjee. foreground left: Jane Bartier

‘of the land’ self-portraits 2024 background:

Anindita Banerjee

Third Space 2024 photography by the artist

pages 14-15

Anindita Banerjee Third Space 2024

Deanne Gilson

Deanne Gilson is a proud Wadawurrung woman and an artist living and creating from her ancestral home in Ballarat, Victoria. Gilson first studied a Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours from Federation University in 2015. After further studies in education, Gilson completed a Master of Fine Art by Research, directly followed by a PhD from Deakin University in 2021.

Gilson’s extensive artistic career encompasses ceramics, textiles, fibre arts and public installations, with her recent works focusing on painting. Through her creative practice, Gilson examines how colonialism has disrupted familial and ancestral connections to Country. For Gilson contemporary art is a platform that can incorporate Traditional Knowledge to create spaces for acceptance and healing while reasserting Wadawurrung cultural identity.

Recent paintings by Gilson often feature woven baskets filled with Indigenous plants and animals as motifs for carrying and the transmission of Cultural Knowledge. Although resembling European painting genres such as still life, Gilson defines her images as reclamations of Aboriginal practices through their symbolic, material and spiritual connection to Country and as a continuation of Women’s business. This series also resists colonial categorization and objectification exemplified by botanist Joseph Banks and Australian artist Margaret Preston’s misappropriation of cultural symbols. 2

In Full Moon Ceremony – Kunuwarra, Ba-gurrk Murrup Gilson uses white ochres traditionally employed in ceremonies from Wadawurrung Dja. The black backgrounds in Connection to Dja (Country ) also incorporate charcoal from her mother, artist Aunty Marlene Gilson OAM, who collects charcoal from her daily fire and shares it with her daughter, continuing the matrilineal lineage. Gilson also includes pyrite (commonly known as fool’s gold), silver and gold leaf in her paintings, giving each canvas a distinctive glow. These elements represent both the natural splendour and resourcefulness of Country, while also referencing the deceptive legacy of European colonization, extraction industries, and the Gold Rush period that centred around Ballarat, the area where she still resides and works today.

2. Estelle Barrett, Resisting Beauty in The Work of Deanne Gilson, catalogue essay, Daine Singer Gallery, Melbourne and online, 2023 https://www.dainesinger.com/deanne-gilson-estelle-barrettessay [Accessed 19.03.25]

Deanne Gilson

The Last Bogong Moth Feast 2023

My painting The Last Bogong Moth Feast (2023) depicts men, women and children catching moths and cooking them on a fire, in front of a cave. I am telling this story because the Bogong Moth is now on the endangered species list and I want future generations of children to know about them. They were a main food source for my ancestors, and we used to feast on them. We need to take better care of our environment: the land and all that lives and grows on this Country, before it’s all gone.

Deanne Gilson

Post Preston, After the Appropriation – Don’t Gang Gang Up on Me, Ya Galah 2023-25

This painting overturns the appropriation from Margaret Preston and uses parts of one of her own iconic waratah paintings and prints, and instead of a vase, I have placed a dilly bag on her actual book cover printed by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In her time Preston used Indigenous iconography including sacred men’s and women’s symbols in her artwork, stating that she was on a quest to create her own ‘Australian’ style. Not considering the implications of taking and stealing knowledge from important artefacts. The pink ochre and gold leaf ground in the painting are connections to Country and reverses the female colonial gaze of Preston, who is said not to have enjoyed going outside. It is not a still life, it depicts a dilly bag of knowledge, sitting on Country. The birds are from my Creation Story and hold their own sacred knowledge.

Deanne Gilson

Moon Ceremony – Kunuwarra,

Deanne Gilson

Full

Ba-gurrk Murrup, (Women’s Spirit Dance of the Black Swan) 2023

Deanne Gilson

Connection to Dja (Country) 2025

This land is shared and we are all connected to the trees, Country and each other. Where I walk my dogs there is a row of Indigenous trees that include, pink and red gum blossom, wattle, manna gum, weaving plants, lomandra and flax lily. I like watching the rainbow lorikeets chasing each other for the nectar. My painting starts with charcoal from my mum’s fire. As an Aboriginal woman that is my connection to her and the gum trees are from our Creation Story. The first man and woman were said to be made out of bark from the tree and clay from the river. All rivers lead into the ocean and are connected. The bark from the trees is symbolic of skin. The burnt charcoal represents fire, smoking and healing ceremonies, fire sticks farming and it has the power to heal us. From my mum, to me, to you.

Deanne Gilson

Aaron Hoffman

Aaron Hoffman is an artist based in Naarm Melbourne. Following his undergraduate and Master of Fine Art by Research studies at the Victorian College of the Arts and the University of Melbourne, Hoffman pursued doctoral studies at Deakin University, completing his PhD in early 2025. His creative practice spans installation, site intervention, digital media and sculpture, examining themes of intergenerational trauma, identity, and survival. Two of the four artworks featured in this exhibition were originally created for Hoffman’s PhD exhibition SLIP SET TRAP at Sorse Gallery, Brunswick in 2023.

The digital video Words in the Ground (2023) represents a pivotal work in Hoffman’s creative research. It features footage showing a hand, pulling an inverted glass coffee cup across a rough asphalt surface. Tension builds at various points when the glass breaks violently, fragmenting and cutting into the holder’s hand, before the process repeats. This ominous tension and anticipation of pain establishes the emotional foundation that frames Hoffman’s artistic practice.

Similarly, Case sensitive (red) (2022) creates a powerful feeling of unease, provoking a deep emotional response. Hoffman’s bright red neon artwork initially attracts viewers with its luminous quality. Gradually, the piece reveals itself to represent the form of a trivet from a gas cooktop. This intentional revelation compels the audience to face the weight of remembering historical atrocities.

The sculptures Inverted Tramp and Drowned Tramp continue Hoffman’s exploration of personal identity, family history, and social heritage. His grandfather, a Holocaust survivor who immigrated to Melbourne, established a dressmaking business called Judy Garments, later managed by Hoffman’s father. 3 Now, Hoffman sources vintage dresses by the label from online platforms and transforms them into fixed sculptural forms using resin. The use of the word tramp in the titles alludes both to the transient, disposable nature of polyester fabric and to the underhanded terminology historically associated with the rag trade. Through this process, Hoffman engages in a dialogue with his heritage while reflecting on the tensions between his grandfather’s and father’s Orthodox beliefs and his own identity in contemporary times.

3. Aaron Hoffman in conversation with the author 19 February 2025.

Aaron Hoffman

Words in the Ground 2023

photography by Christian Capurro

Aaron Hoffman

Case Sensitive (red) 2022 photography by Christian Capurro

Aaron Hoffman

Drowned Tramp 2 2025 photography by Aaron Hoffman

Todd Johnson

Dr Todd Johnson is an artist and lecturer who investigates the materiality of photographic images and their relationships with place. His photographs result from a physical exchange between the camera, transparency film and elements of the environment. After completing an undergraduate degree in photography Johnson completed his PhD studies at Deakin University in 2022.

A traditional definition of time-based media describes works of art that are dependent on time, duration, or function including video, film and audio artworks.4 Photography is theorized as the antecedent to these media forms, capturing temporal moments through visual documentation and generating a durational experience for observers. The trio of photographic works presented by artist Todd Johnson exemplifies the medium’s capacity to manifest time passing and its residual effects.

Johnson’s photograph 1 week, 2 days, 12 hours (Walker Swamp) for example, was created in 2025 on the traditional lands of the Dja Wurrung people near Geriward in central west Victoria. Returning to the location the photograph was originally taken; Johnson submerged the negative for eight and half days in the muddy swamp water. This process transformed the image through natural deterioration, incorporating colour changes, chemical reactions, alterations, abrasions and dirt from Country and the land itself.

During a hike through a forest near Nara, Japan in 2024 Johnson captured the photograph 3 days, 7 hours, an image depicting a deer isolated from its herd. Johnson subsequently submerged the colour film in a discarded bottle of soft drink found at the location.5 This process allowed the sugary food dye to dramatically alter the image’s colours, dissolving the photographic surface in unpredictable ways.

Johnson’s photographic practice transcends traditional representation, instead embracing the dynamic processes of transformation. By allowing his images to interact directly with the landscapes that inspired them, he reveals the fluid relationships between photography, environmental change, and material impermanence. Johnson’s creative research explores how images are not static records but living entities that evolve through physical engagement with the real world.

4. http:/nga.gov.au/art-artists/conservation/time-based-media-art/ [Accessed 17 March 2025]

5. The artist in email conversation with the author 27 March 2025.

Todd Johnson

Film transparency buried for 6 months, 3 weeks, 2 days 2017

This sequence of photographs explores the slow violence of environmental decay by allowing the landscape to imprint itself onto film, both visually and physically. Each photograph undergoes a transformative process: buried, submersion in lake water, or fused with site-specific detritus and pollution, mirroring the degradation of the environments themselves. Existing in a state of both erasure and emergence, the images speak to cycles of destruction, memory, and time’s ‘relentless melt’. By surrendering control to the elements, the work invites reflection on impermanence and the ways in which place shapes perception, material, and history. Ultimately, this sequence of photographs examines the fragile relationship between analogue technology and the natural world, revealing their shared vulnerabilities in an era of environmental instability.

Todd Johnson

3 days, 7 hours 2024

Todd Johnson

week, 2 days, 12 hours (Walker Swamp) 2025

List of works

All works are listed as they appear in the exhibition. Measurements are height x width x depth.

from left clockwise around gallery:

Deanne Gilson

Wadawurrung

born Naarm, Melbourne; lives and works on Wadawurrung Dja, Ballarat

The Last Bogong Moth Feast 2023

22 gold karat leaf, acrylic and yellow ochre sourced from Wadawurrung Dja on canvas

150 x 130cm

Todd Johnson born Naarm, Melbourne; lives and works Naarm, Melbourne

1 week, 2 days, 12 hours (Walker Swamp) 2025 archival inkjet print, framed 85 x 85 cm

Anindita Banerjee

Born West Bengal, India; lives and works on Wadawurrung Dja, Ballarat

Third Space 2024

a series of black and white archival photographic prints on 310gsm Ilford smooth rag paper

89 x 60 each photos by Karan Mistry first commissioned for Linden New Art, St Kilda all works © copyright and courtesy of the artist

Aaron Hoffman born Naarm, Melbourne; lives and works Naarm, Melbourne

Inverted Tramp 2025

polyester dress, wire and resin

130 x 50 x 15 cm

Drowned Tramp 2 2025

polyester dress, wire and resin

83 x 57 x 40 cm

Words in the ground 2023

16:9 HD video, colour, single channel, stereo sound

34 min 15 sec

ed. 1 of 5

cinematography by Warwick Field

Case sensitive (red) 2022 neon, glass and electrical fixtures

ed. 1 of 5

70 x 48 x 12 cm

all works © copyright and courtesy of the artist

Deanne Gilson Wadawurrung born Naarm, Melbourne; lives and works on Wadawurrung Dja, Ballarat

Full Moon Ceremony – Kunuwarra, Ba-gurrk Murrup, (Women’s Spirit Dance of the Black Swan) 2023

silver leaf, acrylic and white ceremonial ochre sourced from Wadawurrung Dja on canvas

110 x 90cm

Connection to Dja (Country) 2025

23 karat gold leaf, charcoal sourced from my mum’s fire, acrylic on canvas

110 x 90 cm

Post Preston, After the Appropriation – Don’t Gang Gang Up on Me, Ya Galah 2023-25

23 karat gold leaf, acrylic, pink ochre sourced from Wadawurrung Dja (Black Hill Country) on canvas

110 x 90 cm

Todd Johnson born Naarm, Melbourne; lives and works Naarm, Melbourne

Film transparency buried for 6 months, 3 weeks, 2 days 2017

archival inkjet print, framed 85 x 85 cm

3 days, 7 hours 2024 archival inkjet print, framed 85 x 85 cm

Anindita

Banerjee

Doctor of Philosophy, Deakin University, 2021

Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours, Creative Arts, Deakin University, 2016

Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration, Human Resources Management, SCDL, India 2008

Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English Literature, University of Calcutta, 2004

Dr Anindita Banerjee is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and researcher living and working on the land of the Wadawurrung people of the Kulin Nation. Her research interests include explorations of cultural otherness, authentic identity and the sense of home. Banerjee is currently employed as Public Art Officer for the City of Ballarat. Selected recent exhibitions include: YouYang Tat Sat, Project Space, Geelong Waterfront Campus Deakin University (2024); Treatment 3, curated by the Public Art Commission, Werribee Treatment Plant, Wyndham, Victoria (2023); Art School Confidential, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne (2023); Ondormohol, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria (2021); Venetian Blind, Palazzo Bembo, Venice, (2019) and Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne (2021); Home and Away, Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, India (2019); Site of Passage, Customs House, Sydney (2018); and Hatched : the National Graduate Exhibition, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth (2017). Selected curatorial projects include: Third Space, Linden New Art, Melbourne (2024); Mining Memory, POP Gallery, Port Adelaide (2024); EPAR OPAR, Maroondah Federation Estate Gallery, Ringwood and the Incinerator Gallery, Moonee Ponds (2024) and Craft Lab, Ballarat Heritage Festival (2021).

aninditabanerjee.com

Deanne Gilson

Doctor of Philosophy, Deakin University, 2021

Master of Creative Arts by Research, Deakin University, 2015

Certificate IV in Visual Arts & Contemporary Art & Craft, Federation University, 2012

Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary), Federation University, 2011

Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours, Federation University, 2010

Dr Deanne Gilson is a proud Wadawurrung woman and visual artist living and creating from her ancestral home of Ballarat in Victoria. Her multidisciplinary art practice interrogates the colonial disruption of her family and explores ways in which contemporary art can create a platform towards healing, acceptance and reclaiming cultural identity, often drawing upon Traditional Knowledges. In 2019 Gilson was commissioned to produce Murrup Laarr, Ancestral Stones, a major permanent public artwork for Lake Wendouree Victoria.

Selected recent exhibitions include: Karrap Karrap Beenyak Mundi-gurrk – Flower Baskets of Knowledge, Daine Singer Gallery, Brunswick (2023-24); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Naarm Melbourne (2023); Beating About the Bush, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria (2022); Still Sacred and Golden, Koorie Heritage Trust, Naarm Melbourne (2022); Awakening Wadawurrung Dja, National Wool Museum, Geelong (2022); Layers of Blak , Koorie Heritage Trust, Naarm Melbourne (2022); Wilam Biik , TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville (2021); She, Walker St Gallery and Arts Centre, Naarm Melbourne (2020); Eye of the Ancestors, Maroondah Federation Estate Gallery, Ringwood (2019); Murrup Laarr, Biennale of Australian Art, various locations City of Ballarat, Victoria (2018); Tell: Contemporary Indigenous Photography, University of New South Wales Galleries, Sydney (2018); Romancing the Skull, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Victoria (2017); and Indigenous Ceramic Art Award, Shepparton Art Museum, Shepparton, Victoria (2016).

deannegilson.com

Aaron Hoffman

Doctor of Philosophy, Deakin University, 2025

Master of Fine Art by Research, Victorian College of the Arts and the University of Melbourne, 2019

Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours, Victorian College of the Arts and the University of Melbourne, 2016

Dr Aaron Hoffman is an artist, writer, and academic whose practice spans installation, performance, sculpture, and digital media, examining fragile states of existence. Through architectural interventions, he explores the relationship between audience, artwork, and artist, confronting the issues and contradictions of our contemporary society including colonization, identity, sexuality, and the human body.

Selected recent exhibitions include: Art School Confidential, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne (2023); Case Sensitive, Sandbox Gallery, Melbourne (2022); Victoria Street, The Wandering Room Melbourne (2022); After Walter Hopps, Platform Arts, Geelong (2022); Presencing, Project Space, Geelong Waterfront Campus, Deakin University (2020); Not Home, Sandbox Gallery, Melbourne (2020); New Agency, New Agency Gallery, Melbourne (2019); Window Shopping, Soft Infrastructure, Fringe Festival, Glenroy (2018) Vent, Project Space, Sutton Gallery Melbourne (2017); Ocean / Oceano, Hilo Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016); Hatched: the National Graduate Exhibition, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth (2016).

aaronhoffman.com.au

Todd Johnson

Doctor of Philosophy, Deakin University, 2022

Bachelor of Film and Digital Media with Honours, Deakin University, 2012

Dr Todd Johnson is an artist and lecturer who employs analogue techniques to investigate the materiality of photographic images. His photographs result from a physical exchange between the camera, film and elements of the environment. Selected recent exhibitions include: Art School Confidential, Deakin University Art Gallery, Melbourne (2023); Climarte: Tree, fortyfivedownstair, Melbourne (2022); Optika Photography Prize, Kingston Arts Gallery, Melbourne (2022); Duration of Decay, Industrial School, Abbotsford Convent (2021); Darebin Art Prize, Bundoora Homestead and Art Gallery, Bundoora (2021); Traces Unseen, Photo Access Gallery, Canberra (2021); Abstract Prospectus, SE Centre for Photography, Greenville, North Carolina (2020); Surfaces, Millepiani Exhibition Space, Rome (2019); Environment Documenta, Millepiani Exhibition Space, Rome 9 (2019); Art + Science, A Smith Gallery, Texas (2019); The Found Object, Praxis Gallery, Minneapolis (2018); Materialist Photograph, Jarvis Dooney Gallerie, Berlin (2018); Fossils, Somos Art House, Berlin (2018); Fossils, Kaunas Photo Festival, Lithuania (2017); Pulp Showcase, FOTOFILMIC, Bowen Island, Vancouver (2016); and Evidence: The Archaeology of Urban Spaces, c3 Art Space, Abbotsford (2015).

todd-reece-johnson.com

Glass, ochre, iron and mud:

Anindita Banerjee, Deanne Gilson, Aaron Hoffman and Todd Johnson

Deakin University Art Gallery 14 April – 6 June 2025

Exhibition Curator: James Lynch

Published by Deakin University 978-0-6459431-3-9 digital publication only

Catalogue design: Jasmin Tulk

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izi.travel - Deakin Art Collection and sculpture walk guides

Deakin University acknowledges the Wadawurrung and the Wurrunderji people of the Kulin Nation and the Gunditjmara people, who are the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which our campuses are based. We pay our respects to them for their care of the land.

cover and back image: Todd Johnson

1 week, 2 days, 12 hours (Walker Swamp) 2025 (detail)