Till and Toil
Karla Marchesi’s Till and Toil presents a new body of paintings that uses the garden as both subject and metaphor for navigating uncertainty, pressure and change. The exhibition reflects on the challenges of sustaining hope amid personal and collective turbulence.
Drawing together botanical forms, produce and a return to the figure, the works explore conditions of growth under constraint. Tangled vegetation, misshapen vegetables and precarious stacks become visual expressions of adaptation and persistence, informed by both autobiography and art history.
Central works engage directly with Lucian Freud’s Interior with Plant, Reflection Listening (SelfPortrait) (1967–68), reimagining the act of listening as a form of reflection and endurance. Elsewhere, vegetables inspired by eighteenth-century market still lifes appear bent, constrained or transformed, suggesting unseen forces acting upon living forms, while domestic houseplants become silent witnesses to emotional and psychological states of agitation.
Moving between the garden and the interior, the exhibition is grounded in the hopeful labour implied by its title. Till and Toil considers what can emerge from periods of uncertainty. Like gardening itself, the exhibition embraces the slower rhythms of cultivation, inviting viewers to reflect on patience, resilience and the possibility that meaningful growth often begins beneath the surface, long before it becomes visible, even in difficult seasons.
Studio portrait by Dale Grant
Stagecraft, (Interior with plant, reflection listening), 2026, Oil on Linen, 165 x 152cm, $9,400.
Undercover, 2026, Oil on Linen, 120 x 120 cm, $6,000.
garden
Tip-toe
time, 2026, Oil on Linen, 152 x 105 cm, $6,700.
Under pressure, 2026, Oil on Linen, 80 x 70 cm, $4,400.
Pothos Still Life (1), 2026, Oil on Linen, 40 x 30 cm, $2,700.
Pothos Still Life (2), 2026, Oil on Linen, 70 x 60 cm, $4,200.
Radiate, 2026, Oil on Linen, 40 x 30 cm, $2,700.
Pickles, 2026, Oil on Linen, 60 x 60 cm, $4,000.
Heaven to Earth (1), 2026, Oil on Linen, 60 x 60 cm, $4,000.
Heaven on Earth (2), 2026, Oil on Canvas, 40 x 40 cm, $3,600.
Bent, 2026, Oil on Board, 40 x 30 cm, $2,700.
Quiet Corner, 2026, Oil on Linen, 85 x 60 cm, $4,300.
Silverfox, 2020, Oil on Board, 60 x 50 cm, $3,900.
Delicate Balance, 2026, Oil on Linen, 100 x 55 cm, $4,450.
Off-Kilter
“Delving further inward, Till and Toil also digs up buried remnants from earlier periods of practice. Motifs that have lain dormant return to the surface, particularly the everyday pile and the relational figure.
The five-panel sequence Off-Kilter situates precarious stacks of moving boxes alongside pairs of male and female nudes. Across the panels, the figures navigate fraught attempts at connection, passing through states of tiptoeing, provocation, confusion, decision making (crossroads) and stasis. Revisiting these motifs felt less like looking backwards than discovering what might still grow from previously sown ground”.
Excerpt from extended artist essay
To read the full essay click here
Off-kilter (tightrope)
2026
100 x 48 cm
$4,400
Off-kilter (provocation)
2026
100 x 48 cm
$4,400
Oil on Linen
Oil on Linen
2026
100
$4,400
(crossroads)
(stasis)
2026
100
$4,400
Off-kilter
Oil on Linen
x 48 cm
Off-kilter
Oil on Linen
x 48 cm
Off-kilter (confusion) 2026
Oil on Linen
100 x 55 cm
$4,450
Gallery Director
Jan Manton
Gallery Manager
Ginga Kondo
Gallery Assistant
Safron Holford