OBIECTIVUS
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OBIECTIVUS Peter Atkins Andrew Christofides Louise Forthun Petalia Humphreys Suzie Idiens Emma Langridge Jordan Mitchell-Fletcher Nadia Odlum Wilma Tabacco Kate Vassallo Stephen Wickham
Deakin University Art Gallery 22 October – 11 December 2026
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OBIECTIVUS
I will never truly know how another person experiences the world –and I hate that. Art is the closest I can come to inhabiting another person’s experience. Yet I know that every person will experience an artwork differently –and I love that.
Obiectivus invites you to experience the world of 11 artists through their work. To assist you in understanding these works, artists have selected objects that are in some way reflective or relevant to their practice. The object is a point of introduction to the artist and their fascinating mind. With their inclusion, we ask you to slow down, and find another way into the artworks that is not based on the outcome alone. The term obiectivus (also written as objectīvus) is the Latin precursor to objective. Understood as something that the mind can be presented with or cast towards, such as a goal, purpose or idea.1 To be brought to the mind, the object of thought must exist outside of it. This lays the foundation for the philosophical definition of objectivity as a reality that can exist outside of the self, as defined by thinkers like René Descartes, and later Immanuel Kant. A philosophy which became central to the creation of the scientific method and
the organisation of thought in the Industrial Age. However, the creation of an objective reality does not allow much room for an artist to be creative. Ideas of Abstract Art blossomed in late 1800s Europe, followed by the defining of Non-Objective Art by Russian Supremacists like Kazimir Malevich in the 1910s. These artists wished to remove the shackles of representation, and free themselves to create rather than reproduce.2 They centred feeling and visual experience and saw representation as a distraction from the purity of feeling. A broad field of art has grown from these early ideologies and, more than a century on, artists are still striving to present a truthful and personal reality. It is not that the work in these genres stands for nothing; means nothing. The image may represent many things: feelings, experiences,
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truths, narratives, ideologies, etc. The work simply does not express them directly through faithful representation of reality. Instead, the effort is made to present these concepts through the foundations of art: colour, line, texture, shape, material and composition. Today artists re-present these ideas in a contemporary context, making them anew by integrating all that has happened since in art and in the world. Works in this genre can be easily dismissed because we automatically search for representation as a point to enter the work and hold on to reality. Abstract and Non-Objective Art requires curiosity so we may be consumed by the reality of the work, rather than digest an easily understood version of our own reality. It can be hard to believe that something could be nonrepresentational; that it could have no link to reality. So, rather than seeing an artwork as non-representational you may prefer to think of it as a representation of the artist’s subjective experience of a world that is very real. The artist is a processor of their reality: life is the input and art is the output. The procedures of translation that happen in between is what we as viewers may try to understand, either for curiosity’s sake or to search for a justification. Through their output (art) we try to understand this process and therefore try to understand the artist themselves. The work is not void of its context, it is a product of it, and for it. We as the viewers (often consuming many of the same realities) are its purpose. Art is usually made without an audience, and while its creation can serve a purpose for the maker without ever being viewed, we (the audience) lend to it a new life. One that is often been intentionally worked towards but extends well past any boundaries of desired intentions.
How can objects bring us back to the reality of the artist? They are the visual and physical embodiment of a concept: an idea, experience, feeling, time, or even a person. The objects displayed in this exhibition are part of this act of becoming for the artist, their practice and their artwork. There are beautiful pieces of artistry that reflect the creativity and calibre of the artist’s own work like that of Wilma Tabacco and Louise Forthun. Sentimental objects that bring the artist back to significant moments in their lives and remind them of ideas or influences that remain important in their practice like Petalia Humphreys, Emma Langridge, Kate Vassallo and Stephen Wickham. Intimate pieces of débris d’atelier (workshop debris) from Jordan Mitchell-Fletcher and Suzie Idiens, the generally unseen objects created in the pursuit of artworks—a kind of artistic archive of decisions which can sometimes captivate the artist as much as the final product. As well as found objects which demonstrate the curiosity of a mind always looking for inspiration, combing cities and homes for interesting artefacts, as revealed in the choices of Andrew Christofides, Peter Atkins and Nadia Odlum. In the current context where imagery, writing and (possibly) thought can be made artificially, this exhibition focuses on what it means to create from real experiences. The objects stand place for a plethora of moments that make up the artist and, therefore, become the artwork. In this, we bring to you a small piece of their external, objective experience as a bridge to understand their internal, subjective practice. Kira Godoroja-Prieckaerts co-curator of Obiectivus Curator, Art Collection and Galleries Deakin University
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1. Merriam-Webster, ‘objective’, accessed September 2026, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/objective 2. Kazimir Malevich. ‘From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting [1913].’ in Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood (Blackwell, 1999), p9: 173-84.
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NOTES ON THE OBJECT
carpe diem. Deakin University Art Gallery and the Centre for Abstract and NonObjective Art welcomes the fourth exhibition of artists whose practice celebrates the depth of non-representational art. This exhibition continues an emphasis on the rational and the creative imagination in the making of contemporary art. The artists here present works that reflect committed engagements with professional knowledge of art and social histories as well as appropriate craft skills. Much of the work here acknowledges the ideas and texts related to social and critical theory and the pervasiveness of post-structuralism. These ideas relate to the analysis of the exercise of political and social power, emphasising that social norms are constructed by society and are therefore mutable if people become directly engaged in challenging the status quo. Over the last three to four decades much has been written, and even more discussed, regarding theories of art, society and literature. This has occurred with the pre-eminence of the text in the analysis of all manner of culture-production. Some artists are self-consciously occupied in these dialogues and modes of thinking in their own particular practice. Others develop and meld ever conflicting ideological tropes with competing stylistic signs, signifiers and symbols, to create a powerfully intelligible whole. However, there is no singular ideology present in the works of the exhibitors, what is evident is the very personalised and sophisticated engagement with the plurality in the visual art and culture. The complexity and diversity of the ‘modes of production’ in current art practice can at times seem overwhelming. The seamless ubiquity and ease of information retrieval and reproduction is such that we are a forced to be our own editors and arbiters in real-time, all the time. The consequences of the much-boosted AI revolution reveal a hermetic synthesizing of personal, socio-economic and environmental
contexts, the produce of which become just more data-product for displays in the hyperreality of the postmodern world .1 Though not a novel notion, it might be the barely comprehensible vastness and rapidity that is the compounding cause of our present culture where everything is becoming just more digital kipple.2 Maybe it is the suffocating immediacy of endless choosing and acting that causes a reframing of the modernist critique ‘all that is solid melts into air.’3 But I doubt it. Perhaps we live in a rich and delightfully challenging labyrinth where artists enjoy the infinite skeins and threads that can be redrawn to create new wonderfully non-fungible forms. au-delà de l’atelier. Understanding works of art is not easy. Amongst artists, critics and historians there are interminable discussions and debates that can be acute or more consequential, with some lasting for decades or longer. Perhaps this is the stuff of fame and history. Even a well-informed observer is subject to personal bias, tribal loyalties, social/political forces, intellectual fashions, and indeed pressure from the curatorium. To some extent an artist’s practice can be purposefully affected and indirectly buffeted by the opinions and actions of many people and circumstances: including those long gone but with ever-present voices. These influences may be overt or subtle, from navigating the zeitgeist to regarding the attentions of local critics to achieve favourable outcomes. The quaint idea that the artist is a lone dreamer generating stupendous inventions is an enduring preconception of the media, myth makers and sometimes even educators. They are stories that conceal the countless causes and effects combined with inventive production; the everyday life of artists and indeed most humans.
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Artists may have ordinary or esoteric lives. Some are so placed and predisposed that they benefit from the myriads of factors that might build a career in the arts, by the making of purposeful choices from a universe of phenomena. For the most part, mature artists can make clear decisions that give appropriate direction to their intentions. This is mostly a non-linear and complex process. Definitely not the Taylorist4 mode of production. Wu and Presence: High-Low. This exhibition prompts conversations about authenticity, value, use, hierarchies of importance and the virtues in apparently trivial things as well as their relationships to self-consciously produced original and unique things. Why does any object have interest for the artist? Does it simply have metaphoric, analogous or personal meanings? The possible answers are myriad and are sometime less than rational or obvious. Does a work of art produced from considering a seemingly worthless item both detract from the work of art itself or enhance the status of the mundane object? These questions have been the content of much contemporary art. In thinking about inherent and ascribed values, I have looked at aspects of the ideas of Walter Benjamin and Philip K. Dick. One a celebrated thinker with high cultural standing and the other a writer in the popular realm. Benjamin5 has been misquoted and misunderstood as being a Marxist materialist with a simple suggestion: the reproduction of the original destroys its ontological presence. However, his interest in the ideas of presence and aura in an original object that give it greater depth, meaning and a near mystical place, is something of a unique frame of reference. Dick also discusses the ideas of reproductions, originals, consciousness and the notion of Wu.6 Benjamin says that presence and aura are real
phenomenon and something that animates an original artefact. Dick mocks this concept, suggesting it is a way to market empty fakes. Dick’s novels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?7 and The Man in the High Castle 8 are concerned with ideas of replication and the simulacra. They raise questions about how and why only an original thing has inherent value because its time and place of production is embodied with in it. Here the notion of historicity is meant as a given ontological fact. The simple ‘what if’ premise of The Man in the High Castle is that Japan and Germany won World War Two and occupy the east and west coasts of the America, with a decaying no man’s land between them. The device of an alternate history creates extreme inversions and distorting of historical facts creates an unbelievable world that is cannily credible. This to some extent reflects the states of play in today’s industrial, non-fictional, first world. Dick subverts Benjamin’s thinking. He contrasts the phoney artefacts produced by American workers to sell to their Japanese overlords. Even while holding an apparently historic object and feeling its essential Wu the customers are mocked for their gullibility. He denies the higher status of the original for an inanimate object.9 Dick is preoccupied with authorship, uniqueness and how the value of things shape reality. He even questions his status as ‘the author’, by introducing another author who is writing an alternative text that confounds the one by Dick. A central element of the novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is the outlawed book by a political leader of criminal rebellion, and possessing the book can lead to summary execution. Whether the book is real or a just powerful rumour is a literary device Dick uses to continually erode any sense of truth in the value system of this parallel world. He is essentially displacing himself as the real author with a criminal usurper, who transforms
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ontological entities and questions about the ways we know what is real and true. The replications and fictions in the novel contradict and invert the time and place of events. A feeling that is very similar to the present time. Today’s artists may co-opt the low to create the high-status items with application of their skills and ideas to create new or reconfigured original works of art. In his lifetime, Dick’s books did not sell well and were seen as cheap, low-brow science fiction. Today he is regarded as an author whose complex critique of art, science and culture are highly original and innovative: both in prose-style and content. Within these crummy paperbacks filmmakers saw astonishing ideas that have been reconfigured, rewritten, restructured and adapted to video and film. They have been reproduced ad absurdum, transformed into the astounding films: Blade Runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report. While The Man in the High Castle is a mega-success and is streamed to the world to any sort of digital device by the omnipresent Amazon Prime. I don’t think the Wu or the aura of these originals has been dulled by their mass reproduction.
1. Bradley Robert Arthur Congdon, ‘Prophet of the Postmodern: The Problem of Authenticity in the Works of Philip K. Dick’ (Master’s thesis, University of Saskatchewan, 2008), p 46. 2. Congdon, ‘Prophet of the Postmodern’, p 45. 3. K arl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, first published 1848, translated by Samuel Moore in cooperation with Frederick Engels, 1888, sourced from Marx/Engels Selected Works, Vol. One, (Progress Publishers, 1969; Marxist Internet Archive, 2010), accessed September 2026, p 16. 4. F rederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management. (Harper and Brothers), 1919. 5. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, translated by J. A. Underwood. (Penguin Group, 2008). 6. Congdon, ‘Prophet of the Postmodern’, pp 21, 23–26. 7. Phillip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Doubleday & Company, 1968). 8. P hilip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1962). 9. Congdon, ‘Prophet of the Postmodern’, p 21.
A tumbling twist of The Man in the High Castle is the devotion of the I Ching by a Japanese high official. The humble yarrow stalks are part of a ritual where his meditations lead him to an alternative world where America and the Allies win the war. Dick himself used the I Ching all his life. Stephen Wickham co-curator of Obiectivus
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PETER ATKINS Edgar, 2022–26, is part of an ongoing project titled Real Estate which continues my interest in readymade abstract forms and how specific visual languages exist within the urban environment. Over the past decade, the area surrounding where I live and work, near Jewell Station in Brunswick, became one of the most intensively re-developed areas within Melbourne. The development frenzy peaked towards the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Now, eight apartment towers occupy a small, one block radius. As the construction of each complex neared completion, a continual stream of real estate signage would appear around our local streets. These signs became ubiquitous in our neighbourhood: staked into the ground, cabled tied to fences, Velcro taped to walls, or displayed on sandwich boards on local street corners. The modular painted panels in Real Estate are made to the exact scale of the original real estate signage. Individual panels are pinned to the wall, echoing the transient and moveable nature of the original signs. As there is no set order, the work can be reordered into different configurations each time is it (re)installed. They could also be flipped to point in the opposite direction, moving away from the notion that an artwork is a static object, which mirrors the intent and flexibility of the original signs. The inherent slippage within the work also provides an added capacity to extend the picture plane beyond a rigid, traditional, format, with panels potentially pinned in loose, random groupings, reflecting how the original signs appeared in the landscape. The painterly surfaces convey a tangible sense of usage over time and are a response to the dog-eared, worn edges and holes punctures in the actual signage. The repeated, overlapping arrow patterns, indicate a visual bombardment, a chaotic neighbourhood rhythm that appears entrenched in our daily lives.
RT Edgar sign 45 × 60cm
(opposite) Edgar 2022-2026 from the Real Estate series acrylic on board 80 × 180cm (total), 45 × 60cm (each panel) Courtesy of the artist
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ANDREW CHRISTOFIDES A number of years ago my studio printer packed it in. Rather than have it collected by the council pickup I thought I would dismantle it screw by screw to see what was inside. During this process I came across the two circuit boards, which I presume were the ‘heart’ and ‘brain’ of the printer, though I don’t know which was which or if each was either, but I did know that each was there for a purpose and not as decoration. More importantly, I realised that an ordinary home office printer was a small universe in itself, with every working element within its universe beautifully and precisely integrated in such a way as to fulfil its printing function requirements. For me, this was a metaphor for how I have always seen ‘great paintings’, that is as individual universes in which all pictorial elements, line, shape, colour, mark and gesture were constructed in such a way as to produce a precise and intricately ordered whole and not simply added as decoration. Also, when I first saw these two small circuit boards they struck me as being exquisite relief constructions beyond their functional use. I saw a parallel between these and some of the numerically generated relief constructions that I have been making over the past fifty years. Common to both was a predetermined system underlying their visual and functional integrity.
Circuit boards from Brother printer 7.5 × 12 × 1.5cm and 4 × 7 × 0.7cm
(opposite) Interrupted Fates IV July 2022 acrylic on polyester canvas 40 × 40cm (frame), 36 × 36cm (canvas) Study VII for Interrupted Fates 1 May 2022 mixed media on graph paper 49 × 39.5cm All works courtesy of the artist
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LOUISE FORTHUN Before I was born my mother was given this small but heavy glass bowl by her Norwegian relatives in the early 1950s. It is an intriguing object in its free form allure and for many reasons it captured my imagination both as a child and as an adult. The glass bowl has qualities that I feel I subconsciously pursue when making one of my folded paper sculptures. Both emerge from a simple form, but each develop into complex, light modulated outcomes. The bowl being round and cube-like evokes more than it is; an object that is bulbous and organic yet emanates from a base in the form of a simple cross. Not just a bowl to contain cherries, it is satisfyingly complete even when empty. The folded paper sculptures begin as simple sheets of paper which I manipulate by hand. Dents and triangles are carefully pressed into the paper to transform the sheet into an object which is then carefully peeled open again. When I am satisfied with the resulting new threedimensional form, I apply colour in varying degrees of saturation. Like the glass bowl, light falls on the variously inclined surfaces bouncing about and confusing the eye as to the actual form of the object. It is this sense of ambiguity created through formal means that I wish to pursue.
Magnor Glassverk (founded Norway 1896) glass bowl 14 × 14 × 8cm (opposite) Pastel Cube I 2026 synthetic polymer paint on paper 24 × 28 × 20cm Pastel Cube II 2026 synthetic polymer paint on paper 24 × 28 × 19cm Pastel Twist 2026 synthetic polymer paint on paper 33 × 28 × 11.5cm All works courtesy of Charles Nodrum Gallery
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PETALIA HUMPHREYS As a child I owned a classic 15-puzzle, the iconic red-and-white sliding grid embossed with gold numbers 1–15. The puzzle relies on a system where a single spatial void allows endless reorganisation of the grid. Both the 15-puzzle and my artworks operate on a shared kinetic promise, they are static forms loaded with latent potential for movement and resolution. The sliding plastic toy relies on a physical void to invite tactile reorganisation, much like how the dissected candy-coloured cube invites the viewer to solve the illusory puzzle of its deconstructed parts. The cube acts as a visual prompt. The surface composition is unwrapped, flattened out, separated and rearranged into a two-dimensional grid and void formation. The viewer is challenged to map how the six flat panels slide and fold together to construct the faces of the three-dimensional form. The two potentially interlocking pieces of the dissected cube invite playful discovery, where multiple compositions shift in and out of view. Expanding and collapsing perspective and form, our spatial awareness is heightened as we move around the ‘Active Objects’*. *The Neo-Concrete ‘Active Object’ is a dynamic artwork that rejects being a static object, instead requiring the viewer’s physical movement to fully perceive and complete its form in space.
15-puzzle 7 × 7cm
(opposite) Cube deconstructed in two equal parts (2P&EP) 2026 low sheen interior/exterior acrylic (Colour Me Pink, Spring Pink) and clearcoat on pine 45 × 50 × 19cm (total), 18 × 18 × 18cm (each module) (two views) Cube (2P&EP) 2026 low sheen interior/exterior acrylic (Colour Me Pink, Spring Pink) and clearcoat on pine 18 × 18 × 18cm Six sides of a deconstructed cube (2P&EP) 2026 low sheen interior/exterior acrylic (Colour Me Pink, Spring Pink) and clearcoat on plywood 72 × 72 × 3.6cm (total), 18 × 18 × 3.6cm (each panel) All works courtesy of the artist
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SUZIE IDIENS I relish the surprise and delight in discovering discarded materials that present as ready-made objects. In this case, two scrap timber offcuts from a carpenter’s workshop— left unaltered as I found them. Positioned on their ends, they stand upright, slightly staggered, with a gap between them; together they read as a unit. This notion is at the core of my studio practice: the perceived tension within an object, between objects, and in relation to the surrounding space. The simplicity is both humble and deceptive, the pieces can be read as mere discarded wood, reduced abstract shapes or as figures in relation to one another.
Two pieces of offcut timber 36.2 × 11.8 × 9cm
(opposite) Untitled #26 2020 laminate on black MDF 50 × 50 × 10cm Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Fiona Susanto (front view and side view)
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EMMA LANGRIDGE In 2013 I had to have shoulder surgery. This meant four months of recovery for each shoulder, where I was not to use my arms. Even when overlapped, this meant no painting for at least six months. In preparation, I bought books, downloaded movies and prepared for activities which would minimise movement. Obviously, I wasn’t thinking clearly when I bought this 6000-piece jigsaw puzzle, so it lay untouched during my recovery. I had all the time in the world, but no capacity. The image on this jigsaw box depicts a neat grid of overlapping playing cards, specifically the court (or ‘face’) cards (Kings, Queens and Jacks), with varying designs. There is nothing particularly compelling about the puzzle, it has no significance to me in its subject matter. And yet, I cannot dispose of it until it has been completed. I tend to cull my possessions, only retaining books and records, and reducing even these if I feel they are not going to be revisited. Yet, I can’t seem to justify the use of my resources (my time, space, labour and concentration), to work on the puzzle. This object weighs on my mind. I feel guilt that it is not assembled and an urge to tip out the pieces and start sorting. But working on it would be a form of procrastination, using my time assembling an image through repetitive motions and concentration, instead of painting… Considering the jigsaw, neatly boxed and packed under my desk, I cannot help but ruminate on my art practice in relation to time: the accrual of marks, the attention to an arguably pointless activity.
Piatnik 6000-piece jigsaw: Playing Cards 50 × 32 × 7cm (box), 106.4 × 157.4cm (assembled)
To make time to paint, to spend time, to waste time, to kill time.
(opposite) Blindspot 2023 acrylic on wood 60 cm diameter Bitter Pill 2023 acrylic on wood 50 cm diameter All works courtesy of Five Walls Gallery
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JORDAN MITCHELL-FLETCHER My practice is sustained by the quiet cadence of the studio: a routine of repeated, habitual actions that, over time, accumulate into form. The object I’ve chosen to show alongside the work for this exhibition is a small bowl I keep close at hand in the studio. The bowl holds a collection of pencil stubs, worn down from producing graphite drawings, alongside copper discs with patina tests and odd pieces of hardware, like screws and nails, that have served as unorthodox tools, thickened with dollops of adhesive. This collection is insignificant in appearance, and for the most part kept without intention. But I think of this bowl as a kind of studio residue, a byproduct of a slowly gathered gestures and actions, and evidence of the same rhythm that runs through everything I make.
Studio bowl 2018–ongoing glazed stoneware and copper oxide, pencil stubs, adhesive, copper, patina, screws, nails, clay and dust 2 × 14 × 14cm
(opposite) Untitled (underfoot) 2026 glazed stoneware with copper oxide, copper tacks, patina and adhesive 33 × 33 × 4 cm Courtesy of the artist and Haydens, Naarm/Melbourne (front and right view)
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NADIA ODLUM I found these weird concrete cubes by the side of the road on a walk in Marrickville some 7 years ago… they are part of some sort of building process, though I am not entirely sure what. I have kept them ever since, sometimes at home on a shelf, or otherwise kicking around the studio. I have moved house or studio 7 times since then, and have multiple times re-found them and thought ‘Why am I keeping these? Should I throw them away?’ … but somehow, they just keep getting kept. I have even tried to work them into sculptures but to no avail. They just seem to need to stick around, as they are. They are a kind of non-object… not ever really making the transformation to ‘art’ that would give them permission to be aesthetically functionless, but with no other clear function stepping in to replace whatever job they had in the process they were originally a part of. I think I enjoy them for their strange allusion to post-minimalist sculpture but also to the ongoing processes of construction shaping the city.
concrete cubes with steel wire 4 × 5 × 5cm (each cube), 7.5 cm (maximum total height)
(opposite) reorientation (lovers and friends) 2024 mixed media, pigment, paper and found objects 84.1 × 59.4 cm (each panel) Realignment 2021 spray paint and vinyl on aluminium 30 × 21cm All works courtesy of the artist
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WILMA TABACCO My collection of powder pigments used in paint manufacturing is extensive, as is my colourful shoe collection. The relationship between Hatshepsut (2015) and the Manolo Blahnik shoes (purchased in 2005) is the colour blue, although I was not thinking of the shoes when I made the painting. There are other similarities between the painting and the shoes; striking design, exquisite crafting, attention to detail, the use of top-quality materials, and both are handmade. All these features are intrinsic to my art practice. While researching the colour Egyptian blue, a series of digressions into Egyptian history led me to read about the life and times of the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut (1505–1458 BC): hence the painting’s title. It is difficult to describe Egyptian blue because it is no longer made and historical accounts of its appearance vary. The closest approximations seem to be cobalt or caerulean. I have both these pigments and a variety of manufactured oil paints so named. I decided to mix several different blues to achieve what I imaged to be a version of the original colour. Hatshepsut is the second confirmed female pharaoh who, to establish herself into the Egyptian patriarchy, assumed traditional male roles and was often depicted with a muscular body wearing male garments and a false beard. Despite her many achievements (or perhaps because of them), including overseeing the Karnak Temple Project, her immediate successors did their best to erase her from official records. Statues depicting her were defaced or destroyed and her achievements accredited to other pharaohs. Her tomb in the Valley of Kings is yet to be officially located and confirmed by Egyptologists. If Manolo Blahnik (b. 1942) had lived during Hatshepsut’s pharaonic reign, she would surely have commissioned him to make all her gold gilded sandals. Alternatively, were Hatshepsut alive now, she would be wearing the shoes in this exhibition rather than me.
Manolo Blanik (founded England 1970) suede shoes 29 × 17 × 9 cm (box), 8 × 18cm (each shoe)
(opposite) Hatshepsut 2015 oil on linen 183 × 152.5 Courtesy of the artist and Gallerysmith Photo by Mark Ashkanasy
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KATE VASSALLO I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder of objects that hold sentimental value. If it is connected to a memory, I find it hard to part with it. The object I’ve chosen is one of these little trinkets, connected to a memory and feeling that holds a special place in my art practice. In 2010, I was in the final Honours year of my undergraduate degree at the Australian National University School of Art and Design. I was 20 years old and booked a mid-semester trip to New York. I learnt so much and saw so much that really inspired me. It was a special moment, where what I’d been learning about felt alive. This included a trip upstate to Dia Beacon that almost felt like a rite of passage. They had unbelievable largescale installations, including many favourite artists I’d been studying. Something in my brain clicked. I had never seen work like that in real life and I will never forget how it made me feel. It was an affirming feeling, that made me certain I wanted to spend my life making and being surrounded by art. This is one of those little badges ticketed museums used to give you to wear while visiting, it feels a bit retro now. Seeing it always reminds me of how I felt back then.
Dia Art Foundation entry badge 2.5 × 2 × 0.3 cm
(opposite) Increment of one 2026 coloured pencil on 18 sheets of A3 paper 126 × 178cm (total), 42 × 29.7 cm (each) Courtesy of the artist
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STEPHEN WICKHAM The Monkey in Me1 In 1970s Nepal, Annapurna Conservation Area, I acquired a vajra (or dorje) and bell (or ghanta). My grandmother had asked me to bring a bell back for her. In the Brighton-home lounge room, she held the vajra and rang the bell only once and placed both objects on her mantlepiece. When she died at 96, I took them home. It was love at first sight, but I have no idea where I got my mechanical monkey. He is cheap, crass and a crazy dancer. Yet there he is, right next to the bell and vajra. A big, wide, happy smile, huge sombrero, beautiful tartan sash that holds up smart red trousers, and cute brown feet. The crashing cymbals are his pride and joy. Just a glimpse of my mechanical companion and I am back thinking about Chögyam Trungpa, a teacher of the Vajrayāna form of Tibetan Buddhism. In Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism2 he discusses the monkey as metaphor for the dualistic nature of the mind; the endemic and ceaseless ways to avoid spaciousness. The text is a complex and elaborate commentary on form and emptiness.
monkey, bell and vajra 24 × 34 × 20 cm (total)
More than every day I notice them together. The monkey with his cymbals and the bell and vajra. And think of all the things I do and don’t do. ‘Eventually, the monkey may achieve his goal—become a millionaire, leader of a country, famous artist.’3 1. Monkey in Me, performed by Jo Kennedy, written by Dennis Nattrass, on Starstruck, Mushroom Group, 1982. 2. Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Shambhala Publications, 1973. 3. Trungpa, p143.
(opposite) Meanwhile in Ukraine. Painting from the lost notebooks of Ivan Kluin 2026 acrylic on linen 210 × 130 cm (total); 74 × 74cm, 54 × 54cm, 33 × 33cm, 26 × 34cm, 30 × 30cm (individual canvases) Courtesy of the artist
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ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES Peter Atkins’ (b. 1963, Australia) practice centres around the appropriation and re-interpretation of readymade abstract forms that he documents within the urban environment. This collected material becomes the direct reference source for his work, providing tangible evidence to the viewer of his relationship and experience within the landscape. Interest is paid to the cultural associations of forms that have the capacity to trigger within the viewer, memory, nostalgia or a shared history of past experiences. He uses the term ‘abstraction from the real world’ to describe his practice. As a student at the National Art School, Sydney, Atkins was awarded the Helen Lempriere Traveling Art Scholarship (1985). He has since received numerous awards and international residencies including the Cite International des Arts, Paris; The British School, Rome; and Green Park, New Delhi. He has exhibited in Australia, New Zealand, England, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Mexico. Nationally, Peter Atkins has held over 40 solo exhibitions with his survey exhibition titled Big Paintings 1990-2003, touring regional galleries during 2003-04.
Andrew Christofides (b. 1946, Cyprus) works across both painting and drawing and has been interested in the visual languages of Abstraction and in particular those of Geometric Abstraction. He also holds a keen interest in early Renaissance painting and early European Abstraction and Modernism. Christofides migrated to Australia with his family in 1951. He then lived in the United Kingdom from 1974 to 1982, where he studied Fine Art at the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting (1974-75) and the Chelsea School of Art (1975-78) in London. After returning to Australia, he undertook a Master of Fine Arts by research at the University of New South Wales. He has lectured in painting and drawing at various institutions including Reading University and Canterbury College of Art, UK, and most recently at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney, where he was Head of Drawing from 2003 until 2012. He presently lives and works in Sydney and is represented by Charles Nodrum Gallery in Melbourne and King Street Gallery on William in Sydney.
Louise Forthun (b. 1959, Australia) is a Melbourne-based artist whose work draws inspiration from the architectural world around her. Recently her works have taken on a more intimate scale with an emphasis on their materiality. The sculptures in this exhibition result from explorations with paper where a two-dimensional sheet is manipulated by hand to become a threedimensional sculpture. Each colour is applied to the sculpture to emphasise the way that light falls across its surface, challenging our spatial perception of the form. Forthun has held 25 solo exhibitions and has been included in numerous curated exhibitions. Her work is held by state, regional and university collections and has received media coverage. Forthun received a Bachelor of Fine Art from RMIT University (1982), a Graduate Diploma from the Victorian College of Arts (1987), and a Master of Arts from RMIT (2000). She has been supported by Creative Australia, receiving a residency in Tokyo in 1992 and a fellowship at the British School of Rome in 2005. She was commissioned to create a Melbourne Art Tram for the 2015 Melbourne Art Festival, and a limited-edition artist print for the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
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Petalia Humphreys (b. 1973, Australia) lives and works on Gubbi Gubbi Country on the Sunshine Coast. From small-scale hand-crafted paintings through to large site-responsive art installations and video works Humphreys celebrates the legacy of material and a genealogy of artmaking, creating playful and illusory works that remap the familiar (and familial). Her works are concerned with spatial sentience, exploring transitional moments that exist between the physical and conceptual. Humphreys graduated from Queensland University of Technology with a Bachelor of Art, Visual Art (First Class Honours) and a Bachelor of Education (Visual Arts). She has exhibited at the Institute of Modern Art, Metro Arts, Outer Space, Five Walls, Onespace and HOTA and has been a finalist in multiple national art prizes. She has been commissioned for public art projects on the Sunshine Coast and exhibited widely in regional galleries throughout Queensland. In 2026 Petalia has been selected for residencies at Bundanon, FutureNOW Sunshine Coast and SITE Noosa. She is the founder and director of Studio 26, a project that curates opportunities for mentoring, critical conversation and exhibitions.
Suzie Idiens (b. 1973, United Kingdom) is known for her geometric wall sculptures with highly reflective surfaces. Using industrial materials and a meticulous process that removes any trace of her own hand, her works emerge as independent objects, mirroring their surroundings and making the observer integral to the experience. Idiens is interested in the subjective nature of perception and the paradox that arises when viewing reductive abstract art–both self-referential and rational, yet capable of evoking a visceral response. She balances intuitive decisions with formal concerns, methodically adjusting geometric forms and restricting colour to a monochrome palette, resulting in singular objects with a minimalist aesthetic that bridge conventions of painting and sculpture. Idiens is a British Australian artist living on Gadigal land/Sydney. She completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Furniture Design at Middlesex University (1997), and a Master of Arts in Furniture and Industrial Design at the Royal College of Art, London (1998). Her work has been shown in national and international exhibitions and is held in Australian public collections including Wollongong Regional Gallery and ArtBank, and private collections in Australia, Europe, Hong Kong, UK and the USA.
Dr Emma Langridge (b.1974, United Kingdom) uses line as an indication of surface, contour and continuity. Line implies a uniformity—denoting an equal value along its length, like that used in cartography and meteorology. Creating a striated surface allows for interference, through fracture and glitch. If the line is a signal, the break in the line becomes noise. It is this disruption which she investigates through her painting practice: creating the plane, only to break it apart, the fragments dissipating and coalescing into new and ambiguous forms. Langridge migrated in Australia as a child, and now lives and works in Melbourne. She acquired a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Western Australia in 1996, followed by a PhD in painting from the Australian National University in 2022. Her work is held by the Holmes á Court collection, Artbank, Bankwest, Benalla Art Gallery, Geelong Art Gallery, the Edith Cowan University collection, and the Centre for Contemporary Non-Objective Art in Brussels. She has held twenty solo and two-person exhibitions, and participated in countless group exhibitions across Australia, the USA and Europe, in the fields of both painting and drawing.
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Jordan Mitchell-Fletcher (b. 1993, Australia) is absorbed in the exploratory nature inherent to a ritualistic studio practice and the detritus it collates. Delving into the foundations associated with drawing, installation and basic sculptural principles, Mitchell-Fletcher’s practice is diverse and deeply focused. Preoccupied with observations gathered from everyday actions such as walking, she indexes the imperfection of the hand while exploring the rigidity of pattern-making and abstraction. Her process-led practice oscillates between calculated decision-making and surrendering control, toying with the material alchemy and unforgiving unpredictability of ceramic firing, coupled with the discipline of graphite and paper. Mitchell-Fletcher completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at Monash University (2015). She has exhibited in various solo and group shows both locally and internationally, including RMIT Gallery (2026), Haydens (2026, 2019), FUTURES (2025), ReadingRoom (2024, 2022), Shepparton Art Museum (2023), and the University of Southern Queensland (2023).
Nadia Odlum (b. 1991, Australia) is a Sydneybased artist whose practice explores the material languages and lived experiences of urban space. Their abstract works transform everyday city elements to investigate the dynamic relationship between bodies and environments. By inviting audiences to engage playfully with the nuances of city life, Odlum reveals urban spaces to be complex, living systems, constantly shaped by processes of interaction and flux. Ranging from abstract studio-based artworks through to large-scale public art projects and playful urban actions, their work encourages a deeper reflection on the material and social textures of our surroundings. Odlum has exhibited across Australia and internationally, including at the Art Gallery of NSW, Artspace, Murray Art Museum Albury, Home of the Arts (HOTA) and MANA Contemporary USA; and public commissions for UAP and the City of Parramatta Council and pedagogical projects for Kaldor Public Art Projects, Powerhouse Museum, and Biennale of Sydney. At present, Odlum is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. Their research focuses on intersections of contemporary art and play, and the potential for public art to create opportunities for intergenerational play in urban space.
Wilma Tabacco (b. 1953, Italy) uses abstraction to map a broad range of pictorial fantasies premised on her interest in cultural histories, archaeological artefacts and architectural ruins. Through meticulously fine-tuned colour relationships, form and spatial constructions and pristinely painted surfaces she provides visual material for speculation on a past recast in the present to invoke the future. Tabacco migrated to Australia as a child and currently lives in Melbourne. She has completed a Diploma of Fine Art at Phillip Institute, Melbourne (1979); and a Master of Arts (1995) and PhD (2006) at RMIT University. She has lectured in painting, drawing and printmaking at the University of Melbourne, Canberra School of Arts, and at RMIT as part of the international programme in Melbourne and Hong Kong. She has received grants from the Australia Council including a studio residency in Italy and an Asialink residency in Seoul, Korea. In 2011, she and Dr Irene Barberis established Langford120, a contemporary gallery space that ran until 2018, followed by occasional projects elsewhere.
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Kate Vassallo (b. 1989, Australia) is an Australian visual artist of Maltese heritage, born and based in Kamberri/Canberra. Working across painting, drawing and installation, she considers labour, control and time through visual abstraction. When making, she works within self-designed rules and systems. Heavily focused on materiality, this disciplined creative process is repetitious and slow. While structured, equally important to Vassallo is leaving space for agency, intuition and chance. Her practice is an ebb and flow of controlling and letting go. Since 2010, Vassallo has exhibited regularly throughout Australia including recent projects at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Goulburn Regional Art Gallery, N.Smith Gallery (Sydney) and Wangaratta Art Gallery. Her artworks are held in the collections of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Artbank, Australian National University, Canberra Health Services and Goulburn Regional Gallery, as well as private collections throughout Australia, New Zealand and the USA.
Stephen Wickham (b. 1950, Australia) has centred his painting and graphic practice around the ideas of Non-Objective Art. A genre for which he has been a constant student of and champion for. As such, he has held a driving role in the Centre for Abstract and Non-Objective Art at Deakin University. While his long-term photographic projects around Mt Buffalo National Park and Barwon Heads have been widely exhibited and collected. Wickham studied photography at Prahran College of Advanced Education (1972) and painting at the Victorian College of the Arts (1974), and later a Master of Arts (Visual Arts) at Monash University (1992). He also taught at the Victorian College of the Arts and Box Hill College of TAFE. Over the past four decades he has regularly exhibited throughout Victoria and intestate. His works are held by the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, State Library of Victoria, State Library of South Australia and the National Library of Australia; as well as many regional public collections across Australia. He lives in Barwon Heads, Victoria.
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OBIECTIVUS Peter Atkins Andrew Christofides Louise Forthun Petalia Humphreys Suzie Idiens Emma Langridge Jordan Mitchell-Fletcher Nadia Odlum Wilma Tabacco Kate Vassallo Stephen Wickham Deakin University Art Gallery 22 October – 11 December 2026 Exhibition curators: Kira Godoroja-Prieckaerts and Stephen Wickham
Published by Deakin University 978-0-6459431-7-7 Edition of 300 copies Catalogue design: Jasmin Tulk Artwork measurements are height × width × depth. © 2026 the artists, the authors and publisher. Copyright to the works is retained by the artist and their descendants. No part of this publication may be copied, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher and the individual copyright holder(s). The views expressed within are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views held by Deakin University. Unless otherwise indicated all images are reproduced courtesy of the artists. 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. Deakin University Art Gallery Deakin University Melbourne Campus at Burwood 221 Burwood Highway Burwood VIC 3125 Free Entry Gallery hours Monday – Friday 10 am – 4 pm Closed on public holidays T +61 3 9244 5344 E artgallery@deakin.edu.au W deakin.be/art-gallery Facebook.com/ArtDeakin Instagram.com/deakinartgallery izi.travel - sculpture walk at Burwood
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