Two Truths In One Frame by sullivanstrumpf

Marion Abraham, Atlas, 2025, oil on board, 140 × 70 cm (diptych)

As we bring together the voices and visions of diverse artists, this issue offers a moment to consider the layered realities that art can reveal. Through the lens of the artists featured we explore ideas of duplicity, how two truths can be true in one frame. In both making and experiencing art, we are invited to pause, to inhabit a space where complexity is not only acknowledged but embraced.

In the galleries, Naminapu Maymuru-White’s Guwak invites us to slow down and be enveloped by Yolŋu ways of being, wisdoms that have shaped this continent since the first star shone. Andrew Brooks examines Seth Birchall’s abundant, laden paintings as offering the gift of unhurried thought, where attention is rewarded by subtle shifts and quiet revelations. Maria Fernanda Cardoso shares her newest work inspired by extraordinary and diverse instances of animal architecture, in dialogue with her collaborator Ross Rudesch Harley. Alex Seton presents The Fabulists, a continuation of his investigation into the puffer jacket as a staged historical object, an encryption of contemporary mythologies and future relics. Barayuwa Munuŋgurr’s intricate mark-making on lost road signs both conceals and reveals stories of Country, offering an understanding of the past through distinctly Yolŋu eyes. Each painting in The Peace and The Fury by Marion Abraham is an emergence through brutality and tenderness, chaos and control.

In Singapore we prepare to reopen a permanent gallery space in the historic neighbourhood, Tiong Bahru. We also warmly welcome two new artists to Sullivan+Strumpf! Yanyun Chen is introduced through a generous and intimate interview with Andrea Fam, where the two trace the contours of Chen’s deeply dimensional practice, one that explores the stories we carry with us, both seen and unseen. Further afield, Chloe Borich visits Jess Cochrane at her London studio where she paints the subtle complexities that reside in everyday moments. This issue also marks Sullivan+Strumpf’s debut at Spring 1883, perhaps Australia’s most immersive art fair, hosted at The Windsor Hotel.

For the Last Word, Director of Art SG, Shuyin Yang, reflects on the evolving role of art fairs in the Asia-Pacific region, and shares her insights into what’s next for Singapore’s arts ecosystem.

We hope that the stories and ideas shared in these pages offer meaningful inspiration and resonate beyond the last page.

Happy reading,

Jo + Urs

Astrini Alias

SETTLING INTO A NEW ROLE often means learning a place from the inside out, and at Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore, that learning has quite literally unfolded among floor plans, construction dust, and deep reflections on what a gallery truly holds. Beyond exhibitions, it holds people, time, and relationships that stretch across borders and mediums. As we prepare to return to a gallery space in the heritage neighbourhood of Tiong Bahru this July–coinciding with the gallery’s 20th anniversary–I’ve been most struck by the generosity and rigour of the Sullivan+Strumpf team and artists: rooted, intentional, and quietly ambitious in their vision.

In celebration of this new chapter, this edition of Quick Curate leans into voices that feel particularly resonant right now, artists whose work honours quiet persistence, material intuition, and cultural introspection, qualities that echo through many of the pieces being unpacked in the studio.

We open the Singapore gallery with a group show featuring newly represented artists Ella Wijt and Yanyun Chen, two distinctive practices shaped by personal cosmologies, reflections on womanhood and history, and a sensitivity to the everyday. Their works sit alongside key figures such as Irfan Hendrian and Tiffany Loy, whose formal experimentation and material restraint continue to evolve with rigour and elegance.

The works selected here carry a kind of gentle force. Each navigates layered histories of the self, of myth, of the body and memory, through deeply considered materials and processes.

These artists remind me that slowness can be generative, and that stories, when told through varied materials can linger long after a show comes down.

Watch this space, as we’re just getting started.

ASTRINI ALIAS, GALLERY ASSISTANT PHOTOGRAPHY

BY NAME HERE

Tiffany Loy

Depth Exploration 01, 2023

Abaca, polyester 77 × 77 × 2 cm

Irfan Hendrian Unobtainable Build IX, 2025 offset lithography and dye cut on layers of paper 97 × 87 × 9 cm

Julia Gutman

The end of my astrological tether (2), 2025 found textiles and embroidery on paper 70.3 × 51.2 cm (framed)

Marion Abraham Attention #3, 2025 oil on board 70 × 60 cm

Ella Wijt Polaris, acrylic pearl beads and two candles 93 × 51 cm Oil on canvas with brass standing frame 20 × 20 cm (painting) 93 × 51 cm (brass stand)

Marrnyula Munuŋgurr Dharwurr, 2025 earth pigment on stringybark 144.5 × 74 cm

Lara Merrett

Flow

We are one and the same, 2025 ink and acrylic on cloth and linen, natural plant dyes (Indigofera

38.5 × 33 cm (framed)

Yanyun Chen Risk : Ever Sight, 2022 charcoal on aluminium 130 × 140 cm

Dawn Ng

Sweetly, Hang Heavy II, 2024 acrylic paint, dye, ink, wood 89 × 89 × 1.8 cm

tinctoria, Morinda officinalis, Cryptocarya glaucescens)

Barayuwa Munuŋgurr belongs to the Djapu clan of the Yolŋu people, whose ancestral homelands are located in northeast Arnhem Land. He was born in 1980 at Wäṉḏawuy, a remote community nestled in a fork of two tributaries of the Gurriyalayala River. However, since 2021, Barayuwa and his family have lived “off-Country” in Garramilla (Darwin) on Larrakia lands more than 600 kilometers from his ancestral home.

BARAYUWA MUNUŊGURR

Words Kade McDonald

Portrait by Fiona Morrison

Image courtesy of Outstation Gallery

Despite this, Barayuwa maintains a deep connection to his mother’s Munyuku clan, revealed through his process of intricate mark-making in which hidden, sacred symbols demonstrate his commitment to the Country he has never left: Yolŋu Country, Miwatj Country.

ALWAYS AND ANYWHERE

Barayuwa Munungurr, Yarrinya, 2023, engraving on reclaimed metal panel, 60 × 45 cm

25 Sep — 18 Oct 25

Barayuwa Munuŋgurr: Ŋaraka – bones of the land

Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney

WORKING ON BARKS HARVESTED IN NORTHEAST ARNHEM LAND, Barayuwa paints his mother's Munyuku clan patterns and designs depicting the sacred waters of Yarrinya located in Blue Mud Bay. His knowledge and relationship with this land is unmistakably evident in his work. Barayuwa’s connection remains unbroken and unwavering through the customary Yolŋu kinship between a person and their mother clan; a relationship known as Yothu Yindi

This commitment represents more than artistic expression or artistic license—it embodies his role as a key contributor to ceremonial life and cultural preservation on behalf of, and for, the Munyuku clan. His paintings act as a raised flag or beacon for this important ceremonial location.

As Barayuwa notes, “Yarrinya’s songs and ceremony are major ones. And it is powerful, the story relating to this place, this land. This painting is different from any other.” (1)

Barayuwa's deep knowledge of these sacred waters is one he carries with fierce respect and family pride. Through song, he remains spiritually present in the place, while through art, he elegantly invites audiences to discover and be drawn into the sacred elements that lie beneath the waters of Yarrinya. His work serves as both invitation and revelation, creating pathways for understanding his unbroken connection and position in Country whilst retaining a line between a public story and a deeper story.

In 2003, Dr. Djambawa Marawili AM, leader of the Maḏarrpa clan, celebrated artist, and chair of Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka, ushered in a new movement in Yolŋu art that redefined the viewer's experience and access. Dubbed “Buwayak ” (invisibility), it authored a distinctive new way of seeing Country—one that reflects how Yolŋu people view what is beneath and embedded within the land and waters. Hidden elements can be perceived through the right lens—a Yolŋu lens—and are ever-present to those who know how to look. This perspective embodies the concept of Buwayak: hidden but always present; an embodied symbol and ancestral continuity in the land and sea. Always there in form but also in pattern.

The first Buwayak paintings were exhibited at Sydney's Annandale Galleries in 2003. (2) These groundbreaking works represented an act of disclosure and a new form of cultural exposure. They presented not merely veils of pattern but offered glimpses of the totemic creatures and symbols implicit in the land and sea. These were works that simultaneously concealed and revealed, launching a new exploration through distinctly Yolŋu eyes and understanding.

Although Barayuwa was not part of the 2003 Buwayak exhibition, he became a dedicated student of the movement and has since evolved into a master of this complex process. He is now regarded as practising the most sophisticated and complex approach to the art of the hidden yet revealed. His mastery of Buwayak principles and methodology has elevated him to a position of considerable respect both within contemporary art circles, and more importantly, among his cultural peers, as a deep knowledge holder and visual narrator.

Within Barayuwa's works, sacred whale bones and swords, traded from visiting sailors from Makassar (Sulawesi), might be glimpsed beneath the intricate patterning. Through the process of Buwayak, he actively invites the viewer to discover these elements and fall deeper into the rich narrative of Yarrinya. His technique creates layers of meaning that reward careful observation and cultural understanding.

“BARAYUWA’S DEEP KNOWLEDGE

OF THE SACRED WATERS OF YARRINYA MANIFESTS IN HIS

WORK THROUGH

Barayuwa Munungurr, Yarrinya, 2024, pigment on stringybark, 197 × 74 cm

Barayuwa Munungurr, Garapana, 2024, engraving on reclaimed metal panel, 60 × 45 cm

Barayuwa Munungurr, Yarrinya, 2023, engraving on reclaimed metal panel, 72 × 47 cm

The detail and complexity of the forms layered beneath Barayuwa’s patterns create such an effective veil that audiences often struggle to reveal the placement of totemic symbols without guidance. Understanding this challenge, Barayuwa frequently self-documents his process by taking numerous photographs as he builds up the surface of his paintings. This documentation makes it easier for viewers to uncover the true essence of Barayuwa’s works, and serves as both educational tool and cultural bridge, helping audiences develop the visual literacy necessary to appreciate the depth of his artistic and cultural expression.

The materials Barayuwa uses are not simply art supplies but living cultural material that carries the essence of Country within its very fibres. Through new materials and techniques, we now celebrate the artistic merit and genius of Barayuwa's hand as he retains the complex layered narrative even in the monochromatic nature of the metal and mark-making. When he applies pigment to bark from his ancestral lands or etches designs into recycled materials found on Country, Barayuwa engages in a form of ceremonial communion that brings the sacred waters of Yarrinya into his artistic space; his literature.

This process makes Country present wherever his work is created or viewed, collapsing the conventional boundaries between physical location and presence or place. Barayuwa's deep knowledge of the sacred waters of Yarrinya manifests in his work through what can be understood as a form of Yolŋu cartography. Though Barayuwa lives physically distant from Blue Mud Bay, his paintings reveal intimate knowledge of the underwater sacred sites and ceremonial elements that lie beneath these waters: Buwayak This knowledge is not academic, but experiential and sacred, transmitted through his ancestral lineage and maintained through continuous engagement both in art and in song. His paintings continue to be a detailed map of a location and knowledge never lost.

In Barayuwa's hands, bark painting and etched steel become a technology for maintaining cultural continuity across time and space, demonstrating that the sacred waters of Yarrinya flow wherever his ceremonial practice takes place. The artist’s presence in Country is maintained through a dedicated engagement that defines his cultural identity and spiritual commitment. Barayuwa is not living off Country, his art is the line that retains his identity in Country; always and anywhere.

“WHEN I PAINT IT (BARK PAINTING) I FEEL LIKE I’M HOME. THE POWER OF THE ACTION MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I AM THERE I’VE NEVER LEFT.” (3)

1. Barayuwa Munuŋgurr, “Futurendja Ŋarranha Biyaŋu, Ŋunhikaya Munhaku | Into the Future, Out of the Past,” in Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala, edited by Wukuṉ Waṉambi, Henry Skerritt and Kade McDonald. (Charlottesville and New York: Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia and Del Monico Books, 2022), 180.

2. Buwayak = Invisibility. Annandale Galleries, Sydney, April 9–May 17, 2003.

3. Interview between Barayuwa Munuŋgurr and Kade McDonald, 2025.

Barayuwa Munungurr, Garapana, 2024, pigment on stringybark, 139 × 83 cm

“THE MATERIALS BARAYUWA USES ARE NOT SIMPLY ART SUPPLIES BUT LIVING CULTURAL MATERIAL THAT CARRIES THE ESSENCE OF COUNTRY WITHIN ITS VERY FIBRES.”

Barayuwa Munuŋgurr, 2024. Image courtesy Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Art Centre

Barayuwa Munungurr, Yarrinya, 2024, engraving on reclaimed metal panel, 60 × 45 cm

Words by Lachlan Thompson

Alex Seton’s The Fabulists: The Puffer as Historical Cipher

A historical contradiction animates Alex Seton’s marble carvings. By rendering contemporary subjects in marble, they are staged as historical objects, denaturalising their presence in the world. From this gesture, a constellation of readings unfold that deepen and exceed the materialities and representations within his work.

Photography Mark Pokorny

IN HIS FORTHCOMING EXHIBITION The Fabulists, Seton continues his examination of the puffer jacket, primarily through the expansion of his Awfully Comfortable series. The title of the exhibition, in reference to his 2024 show “Reality is Fabulous”, draws from a quote in Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden Pond. In the quote, Thoreau complains of the growing indifference to the distinction between reality and fiction. “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truth, while reality is fabulous.” Seton’s morphing of the adjective ‘fabulous’ into the noun ‘fabulists’ suggests a shift in focus. Taking from Thoreau, the fabulist refers to a figure who is unconcerned with distinguishing reality from falsehood, both in the tales they hear and the fables they tell.

Seton’s carvings can be read as depicting the emergence of ‘the fabulist’ from the numerous significations of the puffer — a contemporary object that is a means of personal comfort and protection, a mass-produced commodity, a meme, a status symbol. This attention to the puffer is not about an individual per se, but that which literally surrounds a person, what holds and insulates them from reality — these are the manifold conditions from which the fabulist emerges.

And so, what does this reading of Seton’s work look like? If we again think of these sculptures as unfolding from a historical contradiction, we can learn from what Walter Benjamin called a dialectical image.

“an image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation.”

— Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project [N3, 1], 463

If we take Seton’s sculptures, huddling around the gallery or sitting on plinths, as images that engender this “flash”, Benjamin provides a pattern for observing how they unfold. I will start with “what has been” and follow this as it “comes together with the now”.

Alex Seton Awfully Comfortable Series 2024 2025, Queensland Pearl Marble (Wakaman), cosmetic mica powder, various dimensions.

Alex Seton, Yet Another Mouth to Feed, 2024/25, Queensland Pearl marble (Wakaman), cosmetic mica powder 44 × 33 × 22 cm

A HISTORY OF THE PUFFER

Designed by Australian chemist and mountaineer George Finch in 1922 to aid in his attempted summit of Mount Everest, the first puffer jacket was made using a green hot air balloon fabric and stuffed with eiderdown. The fabric, originally intended to inflate with air, allowed one’s body heat to be contained, but importantly made the jacket wind resistant—as one expedition member later wrote of Finch’s invention, “not a particle of wind could get through”. This, in itself, is a simple lesson—something intended to hold is just as effective at keeping things out. Of equal importance was Finch’s innovation that accompanied the puffer: the use of oxygen tanks while climbing, to prevent hypoxia. The oxygen tank and the puffer illuminate each other as extensions of the body—a colonial fantasy in which bodily limits no longer impede ventures of expansion and ‘exploration’.

This implication of the body, gleaned from the puffer’s history, is evinced by Seton’s sculptures. In their posed stances, the figures straddle representational categories of body and object—an empty puffer jacket stands with its arms crossed or appears to have its head bowed in contemplation. Alternatively, we can look to Seton’s use of makeup and mica powders to ‘finish’ the works, alluding at first to the marble surface as skin, while simultaneously exaggerating their synthetic shine. If Seton’s figures, when considered alongside Finch, present the puffer as body, what emerges are a series of obscure and abject equivalences: down stands in for body fat; hot air balloon fabric for skin; the oxygen tank as lungs; bulging seams mirror the rippling muscle of classical marble sculpture; the tubular structure of the jacket coil like intestines.

THE PUFFER AS COMMODITY

Seton’s movement between body and object exemplifies a further slippage—from object into commodity. Seton’s jackets appear as cartoonish parodies: an obtuse head, saggy arms that become legs, an obscurely large collar that engulfs a figure’s face. However, in their extravagance, it is still clear they reference contemporary images of the puffer in high fashion, memes or AI “slop”.

The puffer, in its ubiquity, circulates through numerous economies as a commodity. In one sense, this is on a material level: starting on the duck farm, to the abattoir, into the factory, into shops, onto our bodies, into op shops, eventually into landfill and toward decomposition. However, within this material flow, the puffer emerges as something immaterial: a product image on a webstore, an advertisement on a billboard, a

post on social media. The jacket Finch designed to climb Everest is transfigured into a commodity produced at unfathomable scale —emptied of its contents, the jacket becomes a container for value, meanings, symbols or status. A symptom of this transfiguration is the image that ignited Seton’s obsession with the puffer: a deceptively realistic AI rendering of the Pope in a designer puffer jacket. It’s difficult to imagine the sheer number of social media posts, internet ads, memes and retail images that acted as the precondition for the puffer to be rendered so convincingly—this is a slippage, mediated by the commodity, from reality into utter fabulation.

“A FLASH”

Within Seton’s sculptures, can we imagine the convergence of Finch’s green puffer jacket and “the now”? Picture commuters hunched over in their branded puffers walking through the CBD, think of Dyson’s recent model of headphones, which double as a personal air purifier (perhaps fittingly called the Dyson Zone) — is this a present-day Finch? In this flash, the bodily protections of Finch’s puffer are commodified, reconfiguring them as comfort. In this form, the comfort of the jacket is not only purchased, but accumulated. This logic is divulged by Seton — if you try to look under the hoods or up the sleeves, you are confronted with a void, created by the jacket closing in on itself. This internal accumulation is an ever-expanding partition between the fabulist and reality. What unfolds from Seton’s sculptures is not a scolding of the fabulist. In this flash, at which the significations of the puffer come together, Seton denaturalises the structures that facilitate this slippage from reality. Contained within this gesture is a call to be wary of the conditions in which we hear and tell fables or stories. Think of the puffer as it sutures off its hood, images as they are metabolised by an AI engine, the uncanny sheen of Seton’s sculptures, or that simple lesson taught to us by Finch’s jacket—as one is being held, what is being kept out?

EXHIBITION DATES

25 Sep — 18 Oct 25

Alex Seton: The Fabulists Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney

Alex Seton, Yet Another Mouth to Feed, 2024/25, Queensland Pearl marble (Wakaman), cosmetic mica powder 44 × 33 × 22 cm

EXHIBITION DATES

13 Aug — 16 Aug 25

Jess Cochrane features at Spring 1883

The Hotel Windsor, Naarm/Melbourne

Words and

Photography

by Chloe Borich

JESS COCHRANE IS AN ARTIST WHO INVITES you to take a seat at the table. Her paintings position you across from a friend at a wine bar, loved ones gathered for breakfast, a prep chef at work in their restaurant kitchen, insisting that you sit down and join them right in the fold. Referencing an ongoing library of photographs taken with her iPhone, Cochrane’s relational portraits and still life works riff on aesthetics popularised by cinema and social media,

capturing scenes that centre the people, objects and shared experiences that detail her here and now. Pausing fleeting everyday moments with her paintbrush, the artist renders digital images back into the physical world with lashings of oil paint. In doing so, Cochrane encourages us to slow down and savor acts of seeing and remembering, recalling slippages in time that otherwise remain under lock and pin, or buffering on an endless feed.

Jess Cochrane

Jess Cochrane, Lemons In A Vessel at Jaquemus, Soho (1), 2025, oil on canvas 50 × 50 cm

I MEET WITH COCHRANE AT her South London-based home studio. Ascending a set of stairs, she opens the door to a bright room where light pours through a skylight above us and pools across the dark hardwood floors. The walls are textured by the faces of nails and the small holes they leave behind, where the multi-coloured outlines of previous canvases ripple out from one another. Drawings made in collaboration with her daughter Zola are pinned up alongside trinkets and painting garments. The artist tells me the space is meant to be the spare bedroom that will soon accommodate her visiting parents from Australia, but for now, it hosts a series of figures in progress dining at Brasserie Zédel. Sitting at her studio table sipping from cups of peppermint tea, I realise we’re staged in an uncannily Cochrane-coded mise-en-scène.

Growing up in the creative community of Canberra and guided by her artist father, Cochrane discovered painting at an early age. Honing her perspective during visits to the National Gallery of Australia, she was struck by the diversity of the collection, from Jackson Pollock’s infamous Blue Poles (1952) to Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly Series (1946–47) to Lucian Freud’s After Cézanne (1999–2000). Later moving to Sydney, she took up a studio with street artists and was influenced by the rise of contemporary muralism. Leaning into her desire to centre the female experience, she looked to artists like Jenny Saville, turning her lens to women and the body to engage with the urgent dialogue around beauty standards and the female gaze.

(1884), which depicts a traditional Impressionist gathering scene by a lake in the foreground, juxtaposed by the foreboding shadow of an industrial estate in the background. Cochrane drew similar parallels between the tensions presented by new technology in social settings today. Rather than omitting phones and devices from her compositions, she began to reveal them — cast aside on tabletops, clutched in figure’s hands, battling each other to get ‘the shot’ — hinting at the ever-present hold they have over our attention and the ways we communicate. “There’s this idea that we’re living in the present and trying to be present, but technology overrides so much of what we do and threatens to get in the way of authenticity,” explains Cochrane. “If a painting stops you, it’s kind of like a thunderclap. I don’t think there’s many things that can do that in the world. Except maybe music and good food. You have to savour the moment, but technology doesn’t savour anything.”

Relocating to London in 2018, her points of interest began to evolve and niche down while in close proximity to renowned collections of Impressionist art. Observing work of the male masters who’d come before — Cezanne, Gauguin, Monet, Van Gogh — her practice underwent a major shift towards contemporary Impressionism, reinterpreting the themes and methods in a way that felt distinctly her own. “What I’m drawn to about the impressionist period is that people were painting because they cared about the way things were painted. How am I using this paint to perceive something as beautiful, as colourful, as vivid?” Cochrane explains. “I want to have a conversation with these painters. Because I would argue that impressionism has stood the test of time and I think that’s because people are interested in how people experience life. I want to carry that on. You can call it derivative, and it is, but I think that’s important in my practice.”

Transitioning into motherhood during the throes of the pandemic, Cochrane wanted her work to reflect the meaningful interactions that she had come to cherish, while also acknowledging the inherent anxieties and messiness of our interior and exterior worlds. She resonated with the discord presented within paintings like Georges Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières

Her desire to slow down and mend time through her paintings is echoed by her creative process. Building on traditional painting techniques, Cochrane works from a Vandyke brown background. Her underpaintings then start by working from photos off an iPad without sketching or any clear delineation of the image in question. Beginning with a single mark, she moves outwards with concise, rhythmic brushstrokes that build from dark to light, using hues like Naples Yellow, Rose Blush and Light Shell to achieve a sense of depth. Using this technique, Cochrane’s paintings appear to dance. Movement emanates from the light thrown by a candle, a breeze gently swaying a vaseful of flowers, a dining table swirling into a suite of dirty martinis and a plate laden with oysters, glistening just so.

Transcending the boundary between sitter and viewer, Cochrane captures intimate moments of dining, conversation and stillness that revel in ideas of connection, womanhood, identity and privacy. Through her work, she shows the subtle complexities that imbue our everyday moments, where generosity and joy operate alongside stress and sorrow; how two truths can exist within the same frame. Pulling us aside and sitting us down across the table, Cochrane encourages us to think about the ways we see, remember and engage with each other, notifications and all.

Jess Cochrane, Ingredients, 2025, oil on canvas 150 × 120 cm

Jess Cochrane, Scenes From A Closed Restaurant, 2025, oil on canvas 60 × 60 cm

Spring 1883

Photography Phillip Huynh

Words by Siobhan Sloper

Sullivan+Strumpf is thrilled to announce its debut at the upcoming Spring 1883 art fair, taking place from August 13 — 16, 2025, at the Hotel Windsor, Melbourne. Now in its ninth edition, Spring 1883 has established itself as one of Australia’s most innovative and immersive art fairs.

Packing our metaphorical suitcases with works by Glenn Barkley, Yvette Coppersmith, Jess Cochrane, Polly Borland, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Michael Lindeman, Sam Cranstoun, Natalya Hughes, Daniel Crooks, Ry David Bradley, Tim Silver, and Barayuwa Munu ŋgurr, the gallery is set to turn beds and bathtubs into stages for contemporary art.

Spring 1883 draws inspiration from the Gramercy International Art Fair, founded in 1994. The Gramercy was a seminal New York event held in the somewhat rundown Gramercy Park Hotel that provided an economically viable platform for galleries in contrast to the white space of a gallery and open plan exhibition halls. The Gramercy (now evolved into The Armory Show) was intended to give opportunity to next generation galleries at a time when the art world had suffered a blow from America’s 1990-91 economic recession.

The fair also shares conceptual ties with historical ‘outsider’ art movements, such as the Apartment Art Movement (APTART) of the Soviet Union, where artists challenged official restrictions by transforming private living spaces into makeshift galleries. So too has Melbourne seen its own share of these activities with groups such as Artmeet ARI staging exhibitions in end-of-lease empty houses, carparks, and underused education spaces.

Echoing the Gramercy’s playful approach, Spring 1883 transforms hotel rooms into intimate exhibition spaces, offering a delightfully irreverent art experience–one that favours intimacy, spontaneity, and a hint of rebellion.

Artworks are playfully and thoughtfully integrated into the domestic environment–paintings rest against pillows, prints lounge on bedsheets, and sculptures make themselves at home on couches. Taking up residence for the week in the Victoria Suite (room 106), Sullivan+Strumpf invites you to lounge in the master bedroom with Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran; do your hair and make-up in the bathroom with Michael Lindeman; rest with Daniel Crooks dreamy landscapes; sit down to dine with Polly Borland and discover your new art besties in the lounge room.

Spring 1883 disrupts the boundaries between public and private, formal and informal, offering a model of exhibition rooted in innovation, proving that the best art doesn’t always need a plinth, it might just need a vacation and a mini bar.

Polly Borland, Bunny Eyes, 2009, giclee print, 68 × 51.5 cm

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Blue Figure with Leaf, 2025,ceramic, glaze, 36 × 34 × 4cm

Barayuwa Munungurr, Yarrinya, 2022, etched steel panel, 60 × 45 cm

Interview by Verity Lees

Photography by Grace Chia

MARION ABRAHAM

Marion Abraham’s upcoming exhibition, The Peace and The Fury marks the artist’s debut international exhibition. In this body of work, Abraham navigates further into the in-between of brutality and tenderness, chaos and control.

From her studio in Molesworth, Tasmania, new subjects with new stories emerge, wading through familiar landscapes.

THE PEACE AND THE FURY

“From this point, I focused on building a world of spectators and secret keepers in familiar landscapes”

VL: Your work often deals with an inner conflict, realised through dynamic interaction between the subjects and the pastoral landscapes you depict. What was the catalyst for this series?

MA: I started The Peace and The Fury with the feeling of a particular cloth — deep red velvet. Although I had many directions for work whirling around, sometimes a little vision visits me, and it is the catalyst for a whole series to unfold. When I think of velvet, I think of luxury, times long ago, and deep intimacy and rebellion. From this point, I focused on building a world of spectators and secret keepers in familiar landscapes, as I know them and feel free to play around in them.

VL: You have previously borrowed protagonists from paintings centuries old. Who are the figures in this series, and why have you chosen to paint them now?

MA: The figures in The Peace and The Fury are contemporary, but you are right; they are heavily influenced by classicism and romantic painting traditions. It is part of the escapism I enjoy when I look back on history through works created by people long gone. I have questions about how I would have existed in a different era and what choices I would have made, and I role-play that using poses, colour palettes and imagery from old painting stories. Looking for what has and hasn’t changed in the human condition interests me; it’s a calming way to grapple with my place in time and space. The two works with young women holding lambs are as ridiculous as they are beautiful to me. The recognised symbolism of innocence (and the ick-full idea of “purity”) is reframed and painted from my perspective. They are in positions of protectors and quiet revolutionaries.

VL: Working with a smaller canvas, how does painting more intimately compare to the experience of working at a larger scale?

MA: It is a challenge! I feel more focused on the subject and less on how expressive my technique can be. And that challenge is exciting. It reminds me that the idea is the most important thing about a piece of art.

VL: You are settled in the Tasmanian hinterlands. How does this environment and its inherent seclusion and intimacy affect your practice?

How do you see that environment, one so present in your paintings, translating to the setting of Singapore?

MA: I am curious about this! I don’t think I will be able to know the true points of connection until I am there or hear feedback from people visiting the exhibition. I haven’t visited Singapore before, so this is a very new and experimental environment for me to present my work. I take for granted my context when I am at home working; I can’t really see the degree of influence from the weather, the skies, the mountains, the air, and my community when I am in it all. But when I see my work somewhere else, it reflects back to me, and I appreciate that the art you make is a sliver of your soul and the sum of your parts. Seclusion is interesting; I am pretty social and enjoy being with others. However, deep down (like anyone, I suspect), I can feel that need for quiet reflection,

and in that space, I can create what is the essence of my lived experiences, such as paintings.

VL: This exhibition represents your first time exhibiting in an international setting. How does this development inform your future thinking about your work and its place in a wider global discourse?

MA: As a child of a first-generation Lebanese settler living on stolen, unceded Aboriginal land here in lutruwita, the international migration paths, wars, colonisation and histories that have occurred and resulted in me living here in this place are something that I think a lot about. Speaking to those thoughts from my own experience via painting is a challenge. I spend my time oscillating from deeply personal ideas to figuring out how to articulate my politics on canvas in a way that feels authentic and optimistic rather than directive. I wonder what messages come through from my work… it’s hard as an artist to know that perspective. It would be wonderful to meet a Singaporean audience and learn their insights and thoughts on my work. I was raised in lutruwita to understand the importance of solidarity with Indigenous peoples worldwide. This international connection captivates me and is what I wish to learn from most. I see internationalism as most exciting and inspirational when it fuels solidarity and intersectional activism.

Marion Abraham, Persistence, 2025, oil on board, 80 × 160 cm (diptych)

Marion Abraham, Attention #3, 2025, oil on board, 70 × 60 cm

VL: In your own words, what is the evolution or a new point of exploration in this series?

MA: I have let myself centre portraiture in this series, which feels exciting. The landscapes these figures are in are important, but the energy of these works is held in the bodies. I am also experimenting with the idea of a common denominator of light, a glow that touches each figure from a light source outside the frame. It is a way for me to signal dystopian feelings that I sense in our current times. I hope these paintings are hopeful, grounding, and empowering to those who need strength while acknowledging our uncertainty. Our bodies are managing a lot now – all the horrendous stuff that keeps us up at night doom-scrolling. I am constantly wondering how something as old and subtle as painting can help us survive and reconnect with the good things about being alive. Each new painting is me asking that question and offering a different answer.

VL: With your first international showcase, and your residency at Cité internationale des arts in Paris starting in October, how are you feeling about everything? What do you hope to gain from these experiences?

MA: I am ready to absorb! I aspire to gain things from the Cité residency that I have no idea exist yet. Underneath that experience, I will also have a focus on language. Outside of the studio, I have been studying Arabic and intend to connect with the Lebanese-French population in Paris. France has played a significant role in Lebanon’s history and continues influencing today’s culture. Although I speak French, it is to my chagrin that my Arabic is only just developing now. That’s colonisation for you; a preference for Western culture and a stamping-out of non-Western language (and thinking) was part of my family’s story. I’m discovering that small steps of learning result in a big change in perspective. As West Belfast legends Kneecap say, “is fearr Gaeilge bhriste, ná Béarla cliste” (broken Irish is better than clever English). Learning language has shown me how different mediums can come together to transform how you see your life and community: language, art, food, politics, all of it. There was a time in my early painting when going to France would have been about learning the techniques of the Old Masters, which is so far away from how I feel today. Now, it is a chance to connect with the communities of people fighting for change and breaking new ground on making visual art to reflect and empower that mission.

EXHIBITION DATES

20 Aug – 20 Sep 25

Marion Abraham: The Peace and The Fury Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore

Marion Abraham, Pleasure, 2025, oil on linen, 153 × 224 cm (diptych)

Naminapu Maymuru-White

Naminapu Maymuru-White’s bir’yunar (brilliant shining) stars dance upon your retina. Applied on bark, boards and larrakitj, the textured stars amass and weave within curvilinear river systems. Across and around her chosen surfaces, Naminapu offers endless paths for your eye to wander, body to navigate and mind to traverse. It is an entire experience to look and be with her paintings.

The end and the beginning

Portrait Leicolhn McKellar

Words Sally Brand

Photography Mark Pokorny

Milŋiyawuy, 2025, larrakitj, 225 × 28 × 24 cm

PAINTING FOR MORE THAN 60 YEARS and exhibiting since the early 1980s, Naminapu is a highly accomplished contemporary artist. Her practice demonstrates a continued inventiveness in the application and presentation of Yolŋu philosophy and art making. Working across a range of media, including print making, Naminapu is best recognised for her enduring Milŋiyawuy series.

The Milŋiyawuy in Naminapu’s practice references both the Milky Way stars in the sky and the freshwater river that meets the salt water at Djarrakpi, her Maŋgalili homeland on the western side of the Gulf of Carpentaria. As a custodian of this place, Naminapu maintains the generational practices passed onto her by her father Nänyin Maymuru (c. 1914 – 1969) and uncle Narritjin Maymuru (c. 1912 – 1981) both highly acclaimed Yolŋu leaders and artists. For Maŋgalili people, the Milŋiyawuy river that flows into Blue Mud Bay is where the worlds of life and the afterlife are connected. Two major songlines associated with Djarrakpi are the creation story of the Milŋiyawuy (Milky Way) and yiŋapuŋapu (sand sculpture used in mortuary rites) (1) This place is both the beginning and the end, part of the cyclic continuum.

Within her Milŋiyawuy series, Naminapu’s paintings include both highly refined black and white condensations of bir’yunar stars and complex illustrated accounts of Guwak, the ancestral koel cuckoo bird who is a guide and messenger in Yolŋu tradition and created many distinctive features of Djarrakpi. Examples of both these types of paintings are included in Naminapu’s most recent exhibition Guwak — the Ancestors, demonstrating the great breadth of her practice. The black and white star paintings are like poetry in their elegant efficiency whereas barks such as Guwak (2025) parallel the genre of great epics. In this latest painting, Guwak can be found upon Ganyawu (wild cashew tree) overseeing a multiplicity of scenes that play out between and are surrounded by fields of stars. Intricate ochre line work embellishes every inch of the bark and as in all Naminapu’s paintings, every mark contributes meaning. It is interesting to compare this new painting with Maŋgalili Dhawu (1997) an impressive 3m high bark painting held in the National Gallery of Australia collection. Guwak again stands prominently upon Ganyawu and is surrounded by other central characters in the Djarrakpi story: Garanyirrnyirr (cicada), Marrŋu (possum) and Gunyan (crabs).(2) Overall, the composition of the earlier bark is highly structured and linear, whereas in Guwak (2025), this structure remains but finds a new freedom of curvilinear expression.

Since early 2024, I’ve had the great privilege to work alongside Tony Albert in his role as Artistic Director of the 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial: After the Rain opening at the National Gallery of Australia December 2025. In this major exhibition, Naminapu will be featured as one of 10 ambitious artistic projects created by First Nations artists from across the country. The National Gallery of Australia holds significant examples of Naminapu’s practice, including the epic Milngiyawuy - Celestial River (2022) featuring 42 individually painted barks that create one painting installation. At Naminapu’s instruction, Albert and the team at the

Naminapu Maymuru-White, Guwak, 2025, painting on bark 204 × 101 cm

Naminapu Maymuru-White, Milŋiyawuy, 2025, painting on board, 185 × 122 cm

National Gallery are creating a ‘star cave’ for audiences to sit and be immersed in the experience of her paintings. No doubt Naminapu’s installation will be a highlight for visitors who will be invited to slow down and be surrounded by Yolŋu ways of being and understanding that have existed on this continent since the first star shone in the sky.

There is both pleasure and reward in engaging with Yolŋu stories and seeking an appreciation of this ancient worldview. Engaging with the many layers of Naminapu’s practice recalls my young art historical studies in Italian Renaissance paintings, which always felt a world away from my life in suburban Brisbane. Following her inclusion in the 2024 Venice Biennale, Naminapu’s bark painting Milŋiyawuy (2024) was acquired by the Tate Modern in London. I think it is incredibly apt that her work will live in the same city as Tintoretto’s Origin of the Milky way (ca. 1575 – 1580) held in the collection of the National Gallery London. The generosity of Yolŋu artists, their willingness to share, coupled with their seemingly limitless ambition, makes Yirrkala one of Australia’s best art places. Located more than 4000km from Sydney it too can feel a very long way away. Yet, each summer season the southeastern part of Australia is home to the migratory koel birds who have travelled from the north, even beyond Yirrkala from as far as Indonesia. In the evenings, and sometimes all through the night, the lonesome night cries of the koel can be heard over the cities and homes. The koel bird connects us across distances. In Naminapu’s painting, Guwak provides a connection between this world and the next. When you hear him next, your mind should be filled with stars.

Sally Brand is a Coordinator for the National Indigenous Art Triennial, National Gallery, Canberra.

1. ‘Djarrakpi’, Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala, exhibition online resource organized by the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia in partnership with the Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala. https://madayin.kluge-ruhe.org/ experience/locations/djarrakpi/

2. Naminapu Maymuru-White, Maŋgalili Dhawu (1997) Artwork Description provided by Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala.

Naminapu Maymuru-White, Milŋiyawuy, 2025, larrakitj, 225 × 28 × 24 cm

31 Jul — 23 Aug 25

Naminapu Maymuru-White: Guwak–the ancestors Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney

“The Milŋiyawuy in Naminapu’s practice references both the Milky Way stars in the sky and the freshwater river that meets the salt water at Djarrakpi”

Milŋiyawuy River of Stars (detail), 2025, painting on board, 184.5 × 122 cm

Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar with green fingernails (Dora Maar aux ongles verts)

Words by Andrew Brooks

Maurer

Seth Birchall

Sweepings

SETH BIRCHALL’S PRACTICE IS ROOTED IN both observation and memory, shaped by his lived experience of urban environments, and an ongoing longing for natural and communal spaces. For Birchall, the natural world holds a profound capacity for psychological and spiritual renewal. His paintings offer these spaces up not to instruct, but to feel — creating room for the viewer to bring their own memories, experiences, and sense of longing to the work. These paintings are a form of environmental resistance: a poetic contribution to ongoing conversations around sustainability, access, and the value of natural and communal space.

Photography by Jessica

on saturday mornings, I take my daughter to the local pool for her weekly swimming lesson. Until recently, I’d pull up a seat next to Seth Birchall while our kids learned the choreography to propel their bodies from one end of the pool to the other or allow them to dive for small, weighted toys in the shape of squids and sharks. Time seemed to slow down, the morning light giving way to the midday sun, as the kids moved from their lesson into play, from play into snacks. By the side of the pool, or sometimes in it, we’d catch up on the week: daily rhythms, the small and large transformations in a child’s world, meals cooked and eaten, books read or not, desires enduring and fleeting, anxieties practical or existential. Seth’s quiet disposition always made room for unhurried thought inside the bustling tempo of kids at play. I’m looking at a series of new paintings made by Seth: rows of trees bearing fruit; the deep brilliant pinks of the setting sun rendering palms as shimmer and blur; the bountiful branches of a mature apple tree subsuming

the earth it grows from, framed by mountains that rise in the background. Orchards and glades, fruits waiting to be plucked from branch or ground, limbs and leaves overspilling an enclosed plot, trees standing beyond a fence. The content of these paintings have me reaching simultaneously into the past and the future. I’m reminded of violent histories of enclosing the commons, the theft of Indigenous land, and the separation of those who tended the land from access to its spoils in order for the capitalist mode of production to emerge. I’m reminded of small acts that resist these separations, like the practice of workers taking offcuts from their shipyard and factories and marketplaces in industrialising England—minor reappropriations of timber, tobacco, nails, and fruits to be put to work to repair the home or village, or placed on the table to supplement a meagre meal. I think, too, of the reciprocal relationality of Indigenous ways of knowing and being that insist on a world beyond the twin logics of extraction and accumulation.

28 Aug — 20 Sep 25

Seth Birchall: Tender the Orchard Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney

Seth Birchall, Alila, 2024, oil on canvas, 61 × 46 cm

Seth Birchall, You Must Look After Your Friends, 2024, oil on canvas 168 × 275 cm (diptych)

Or the revolutionary experiments of the Paris Commune of 1871, which sought to thwart burgeoning capitalist agricultural practices by bringing the paysans of the countryside into direct contact with the urban masses in order to feed people according to the principle from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. This reaching into the past propels me into the future, a reminder that the world was once different, is often different, and so will change again.

how can a painting create this stretching of time?

John Berger once wrote that ‘a drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree being-looked-at.’ The distinction is subtle: where a tree is registered almost instantaneously in sight, its rendering as drawing (or in our case, a painting) requires examination. The painting is an assemblage of many moments, a reflection of the artist looking again and again. The image is not static, even if at first glance it appears this way. The painting opens toward an experience of time–somewhere beyond the determination of time as linear and exchangeable. If there is a certain romanticism to this position, then I intend it in the sense of the fantastic temporality that William Blake unlocks in the opening lines of his poem ‘Auguries of Innocence,’ arising from his own examination of the natural world in the process of catastrophic transformation by industrial capital:

to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.

Seth’s paintings invite us to look not only at scenes rendered in oils but, more importantly, at the accumulation of glances that come together in a unified image. These paintings gesture to the conditions of their own making: the texture of brushstrokes, the saturation of colours, the layering of paint. The resulting image contains the density of these many moments, the brilliant vibration of an impression as it oscillates between disappearance and permanence. What we see is a tree, a field, fruit being-looked-at. Here the image opens toward a temporality beyond clock-time coded by the metronomic rhythms of production. The gift his painting offers us is the gift of unhurried thought.

From unhurried thought to unhurried action, like stealing back a different sense of time by the pool while kids play or strolling along the banks of the Merri Creek, stopping here and there to examine the collective experiments in communal gardening. If these paintings suggest a temporality that is multiple, then they also ask us to cultivate a way of seeing that can attend to the dynamism of the image. The work stages a quiet object lesson in what it might mean to reappropriate our senses from the logics of private property that accompany the great enclosures and render all of life, including one’s inner life, extractable. Look once, look again. The image of the tree laden with fruit contains within it the experience of looking itself and the pleasures of attention. As we stand on the precipice of ecological catastrophe, could the reappropriation of the senses be one way to begin imagining different relations with land?

Andrew Brooks, June 2025

Andrew Brooks is a writer, researcher, and teacher. He works as a lecturer in media and culture at UNSW, Sydney. He is the author of Inferno (Rosa Press) and the co-author of the Homework (Discipline) and the forthcoming Year of the Ox (Cordite Books).

Seth Birchall, Your voice smells good, 2024, oil on canvas, 46 × 56 cm

“What we see is a tree, a field, fruit being-looked-at. Here the image opens toward a temporality beyond clock-time coded by the metronomic rhythms of production. The gift his painting offers us is the gift of unhurried thought.”

Seth Birchall, Country Orchard (Apples), 2025, oil on canvas, 36 × 30 cm

It is with great delight that we welcome Yanyun Chen to Sullivan+Strumpf, an artist whose work sits delicately in uncomfortable places. Her work is grounded in an investigation into time, memory, grief, and the stories we carry—physically, psychologically and intergenerationally.

Yanyun Chen Introducing

In recognition of this exciting chapter beginning, Yanyun Chen caught up with friend, writer and curator, Andrea Fam, recognised for her belief in curation as a relational and responsive methodology, one that values sustained dialogue and allows artistic processes to shape the curatorial form. With this conversation, Fam’s questions introduce us to the artist’s practice while making room for the depth and intimacy her work carries.

An interview by ANDREA FAM with artist YANYUN CHEN

Photography by Tony Cuhadi

yc Thanks so much for inviting me to do this. It really means a lot. It’s always a pleasure to be in conversation with you, and I’m grateful for the chance to revisit your practice in this way.

It means so much to me that we get to be in each other’s presence and to share a dialogue again. I am so deeply appreciative, because I have always felt incredibly nourished after our conversations. It’s such a privilege to be learning with you the past 7 years together. Thank you, Andrea, for the warmth and generosity, and these very challenging questions!

af I’ve always been struck by how your work sits so delicately in uncomfortable places—grief, pain, beauty, expectation—and your process, especially your drawings, feels incredibly intimate and meditative. When you’re in the studio, what’s going through your mind? Are you trying to resolve something, or just sit with it?

yc The studio is a production space: something is being tested, an idea is scribbled down, a drawing or construction ongoing, with an audiobook blasting on full volume. While there may be movement, sound, and activity, there is also the other space–one that exists in my mind. It is there where I wrestle with feelings and thoughts that arise in solitude. It is in the mental studio that I sit with pain

when I don’t have the words, where I rage and reflect on how to respond belatedly, where feelings rise to the surface looking for words. I suppose I am mostly just talking to myself, thinking through things and translating them into material and image. These material translations stand in as articulations — words, sentences, essays — that fill the silence and eventually litter the walls and floors of my studio. For me, more crucial than seeking resolution or sitting with grief is articulating the questions that need asking.

It is strange to describe, but I see the physical and mental studios as two separate dimensions with contradicting activities ongoing at the same time. I find myself being hyper focused yet slightly distracted at the same time, akin to observing attentively while being slightly out of focus, or multi-tasking then task-switching, so there is always one thing that is in focus while being aware of other things and then flickering the focus of attention between them back and forth.

Words and actions can be as sharp as blades. The scars that write us (2018) unraveled from my grandmother’s comment, pointing to the keloid scar on my chest, that with that mark, I’d be identifiable as a corpse; Stories of a woman and her dowry (2019-2022) unravels an intergenerational conflict about what makes a good Chinese woman; botanic.

Yanyun Chen, Flux, 2025, charcoal on paper, 40 × 56 cm

I searched for a way of drawing that echoed the process of scarring, and I found this in welding steel. Welding joins two pieces of metal together with metal and heat, it injures then heals gaps, thus bonding separate pieces together. So, I learned to weld in order to draw as a keloid scar would.

When I think about the strength and ravages of being woman, I think of this line by Ocean Vuong in Night Sky with Exit Wounds: “When they ask you/ where you’re from,/ tell them your name/ was fleshed from the toothless mouth of a war-woman./ That you were not born/ but crawled, headfirst — / into the hunger of dogs. My son, tell them/ the body is a blade that sharpens/ by cutting.”

When I searched for respite, The Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living by Anne Dufourmantelle serves as a guide: “Gentleness is what turns traumatic intrusion into creation. It is what, during the haunted night, offers light; during mourning, a beloved face; during the collapse of exile, the promise of a shore on which to stand.”

These words nourish my queries around home, womanhood, social constructs and traditions, and they offer different voices, approaches and perspectives. Finding the right combination of elements — words, materials, tools, process, image and thought — end up being a dialectical and rhetorical exercise. I traverse different modes of making and materials to find what is inevitable in my own vocabulary of storytelling. Again, for The scars that write us (2018), it had to be welding with metal, it was inevitable. There was no other way to draw that could hold the weight of my feelings. Yet within this inevitably contains an inherent resistance and contradiction to the perception of scars, that welding mends just as much as it destroys, scars show how we have healed as much as it reminds us of our trauma.

af Your work crosses philosophical ideas, different modes of making, and a variety of materials — from drawing to steel to animation. How do you navigate these different elements? Is it a matter of balancing, or does one lead the others?

yc I relish in paying close attention, then following where that attention slips and drifts. Which is why drawing is fundamental in my practice, because what begins as a fleeting sketch or a rough scribble opens a space for me to enter closer and deeper into the intimate privacy of the observed subject. At that point, drawing feels like touching. I couldn’t find the words to say, so I simply show you what I have seen up close. It is my way of tracing a feeling, and what I often end up with is a portal into and a portrait of what I am looking at floating in the darkness of coal and ash.

For works like The scars that write us (2018) which spoke about keloid scarring — a scar that grows beyond the boundaries of the wound — drawing on paper didn’t feel sufficient. A line on paper might be a scratch, a tear, the makings of a wound, but it wasn’t a process of healing.

af Time feels like the invisible material in much of your work — not just in the durational labour of drawing or animation, but in how things are allowed to unfold slowly. What is your relationship to time when you’re making?

yc I love stories and storytellers. Perhaps it was my background in animation. Perhaps it was because my family went to the cinema every Saturday, or that my parents are both bibliophiles and reading became the only way to escape the Singapore education grind. A good story is simply a series of unfoldings told beautifully, rich with feeling. The thing about feelings like grief, fear and joy, is that they are endless like the tides. Each time they come to me, or I go to them, there is a re-writing of memory, and these re-writes are never quite the same either. Remembering refracts and fragments. Every minor shift results in a change, and over time, changes beget movement, and movement accumulates into an animation. That’s how I see my multiple bodies of work, or of the materials I use, or the stories I pursue about scars, dowries, wilting, or skin — one leads to the next.

Yanyun Chen, Plumed Serpent, 2023, charcoal on paper, 37 × 37 cm

EXHIBITION DATES

25 Jul — 16 Aug 25

Yanyun Chen features in Bricks Laid, Stories Untold Sullivan+Strumpf Singapore

Andrea Fam is a curator and writer whose practice is grounded in empathic enquiry, unfolding through sustained conversations and relationships of trust with artists. Her curatorial focus centres on contemporary art from Southeast Asia, with exhibitions realised in Singapore and across the region. She has held institutional roles supporting the development of artist residency programmes, and her work spans national collections as well as community-led initiatives. Central to her approach is the belief in curation as a relational and responsive methodology — one that values sustained dialogue and allows artistic processes to shape the curatorial form.

af Joining Sullivan+Strumpf feels like a new chapter. What kinds of conversations or directions are you hoping to open in this next phase of your practice?

yc It is a major transition: out of teaching and committing my time fully to my practice. It is a privilege, and I am excited to be walking this new phase of the journey with Sullivan+Strumpf. I have been thinking about the scaffolds that restrict and structure a person’s upbringing. I am embarking on the third Family Stories narrative: about the ways we remember childhood discipline. In my research, I see how good intentions, expectations, and justifications informed by past experiences twist and knot our relationships within the family; how rattan exists as both disciplinary cane and familiar furniture in Southeast Asia and that one material is able to hold both associations of pain and comfort; how our bodies are shaped by values and systems around us. It draws from my earlier works, with particular emphasis on care, aging, intergenerational conflict, and material studies. Along with this new investigation, I will also be refining and extending earlier branches of works — on botanicals, on women, on bodies, on scars — to grow their vocabularies.

af And just to end on a note of curiosity — are you thinking about or working through any new themes right now that you haven’t quite figured out how to make into a work yet?

yc I was told that I had to walk into the darkness of my work, and so that’s where I am headed. In the end, beyond detritus, is it beauty that I might find? Or something else completely different in the ash and fire? What do we do in the aftermath and how do we recover from what we are left with? Facing the current chaos of our world, these questions have kept me moving ahead, if only to understand what it means to be human today. Being human, that’s crucial work that needs making, and I’m still trying to figure that out.

MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO

Interviewed by ROSS RUDESH HARLEY

FOR OVER 35 YEARS, Maria Fernanda Cardoso has been creating work that draws on nature, art, science, and technology–reimagining how we see the non-human world. Across sculpture, installation, video, and performance, she has used unconventional materials and methods to produce artworks that reveal the ingenuity and complexity of other species. Her practice challenges human-centered ideas of creativity and invites audiences to think differently about how life forms shape their environments.

Cardoso’s latest project centres on The Animal Architecture Collective, a diverse group of artists, architects and researchers formed through a 2024 residency at Berlin’s Spreepark Art Space. The Collective includes Cardoso Studio, comprising Maria Fernanda Cardoso and her partner, Ross Rudesch Harley–whose past collaborations have been exhibited at leading institutions including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, New York’s MoMA, and the Sydney Opera House.

The Berlin residency helped platform Cardoso’s ongoing research, which will culminate in a solo exhibition at Sullivan+Strumpf. At its core is a compelling question: what can animal-built structures teach us, not only about design and Construction, but about intelligence, intention, and the very meaning of creativity?

The Animal Architecture Collective at Spreepark Art Space 3 month residency, spring 2024. Left to Right: James Peplow Powell, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Matthew Darmour-Paul, Jennifer Turpin, Ross Rudesch Harley. Photo by Sophie Canari

RH: What gave you the inspiration to think deeply about the creativity of animals, especially the built forms they make?

MFC: I am always on the lookout for new research projects about the natural world, particularly about animals — especially the small. Being the daughter of two architects, I grew up thinking and looking at architecture, art, music and nature. I even studied architecture for three semesters at university. I am a maker of things, and recently I have become more focused on how animals ‘make’ things.

This current body of work is a natural progression from the videos “On the Origins of Art I-II”, featuring Maratus spider courtship displays that demonstrate how visual and performing art communication was developed millions of years before human artists. They are incredibly sophisticated creatures.

During my animal architecture research, I read a book about ant architecture which had an image that stopped me in my tracks. The image featured a scientist, looking up at a cast he had made of a complex ant nest larger than himself. You could see he was in awe of what the ants had built. It blew my mind!

I placed the book on my desk, open on that page, where I could look at it every day and remind myself to one day make an artwork with it. That was my first idea for an Animal Architecture artwork, but from there the idea grew. In early 2023 I had the opportunity to come up with a concept for a public artwork and I dived into more research. I had already built a library of books about animal architecture, so I had all the references at the tip of my fingers.

I visualised what a marvelous and challenging thing it would be to make an open air Museum of Animal Architecture. That was my concept for a public artwork/ park! But the timing for competitions is tight and you need years to develop something like this. As part of my public art proposal, I created a word/image poem presentation to debunk the human-centric assumptions we often have about architecture. I started by asking “Who said that humans invented architecture?”

This is how the concept for this new body of work was born. I didn’t get the public art commission, but I did have a well-developed concept ready to go.

Evidence of a resident animal architect at Spreepark, a beaver. Photo by Maria Fernanda Cardoso

Hand written notes by Maria Fernanda Cardoso with revisions after the first prototype of the 3D printed ant nest

Maria Fernanda Cardoso with 1:1 Fascimile of a Harvestman Ant Nest. Photo: Ross Rudesch Harley

THE ANIMAL ARCHITECTURE

Pop-up of video installation of Introducing the Animal Architects, at a garden shed at Spreepark, a former amusement park in West Berlin. Spring 2024

Template for digital drawing

drawing by Maria Fernanda Cardoso

RH: How did you come to be part of the Animal Architecture Collective?

MFC: Our colleague and artist friend Jennifer Turpin brought to our attention a three-month residency in Berlin, in the middle of a park next to the river Spree. The residency was only for collaborative teams. So we invited some young architects who Jennifer knew, and decided to apply with my ready-made proposal and we got it!

So the concept became the basis for our collective. We had a lot of synergy. Jennifer, a renowned public artist, was recently working on a public artwork/ fountain for birds; architects James Peplow-Powell and Mathew Darmour-Paul are both part of a very interesting collaborative research team specialising in human architecture for animals Feral Architects; and my partner and long-time collaborator Ross Harley has always been interested in the ways that nature and new technologies come to form our practice as artists, designers and architects.

We brought to Berlin many of my books, which we studied together whilst exploring the old amusementpark-turned-artspace where we were based for several months. We did lots of brainstorming and several outcomes emerged from that residency.

One was a fast and rough hand-drawn animation of my visual poem pitch, “Who said that humans invented architecture?” shown here in this show. We also worked on an Atlas of Animal Architecture

with drawings of the different types of structures by Matthew and James. Ross ended up making an AI-based artwork called The Hallucinating Atlas of Animal Architecture. Jennifer also focused on a public art proposal for Spreepark, which we can’t talk about quite yet.

RH: Your artwork always seems to question the privileged position of humans in creative endeavours. How do you go about conveying this to your audiences?

MFC: It involves paying attention, researching and finding the most effective medium and display techniques to share with an audience. A lot of my work is all done one specimen at a time and made possible by collaborating with other scientists, designers and artists. I think it will take another decade of my practice to develop this complete body of work, if not longer.

RH: You often draw attention to the beauty of the natural world, “hidden in plain sight” as it were. Is that what you’re focussing on in this series?

MFC: In this project I am not looking for beauty but for wonder. I describe wonder as the moment when we truly see something for the first time and have a revelation, a moment when something changes our understanding forever. A moment of surprise and awareness, a moment of awe when we feel much smaller than the world

Digital drawing by Maria Fernanda Cardoso

around us. I want the audience to be in awe of the skills, inventions, designs, materials, construction techniques, functionality and sophistication of built forms that nonhumans have invented, created and perfected way before humans.

When I saw the Harvest ant cast nests, I understood the magnitude of what these other non-human species were capable of creating, and I was humbled. A lesson? Admire and protect other species no matter how small. Learn from all other forms of life. Let's coexist. Let's not destroy any more habitat. It's also time to restore and create new habitats where all these nonhuman creative wonders of built form can abound.

RH: What are your favourite examples of architecture made by other-than-human animals?

MFC: The swallow mud nests I discovered while walking in Fowlers Gap Research Station, near Broken Hill. It was built on a sand bank and abandoned. But it opened my mind to think that these birds had invented the technique that we now call 3D printing, but again, millions of years ago. That was another moment that really prompted me to question why we think us humans are superior animals, especially since we may have just copied what other smaller brained animals have invented.

EXHIBITION DATES

28 Aug—20 Sep 25

Maria Fernanda Cardoso: Who said that humans invented architecture? Sullivan+Strumpf Gadigal/Sydney

Interview between Ross Rudesh Harley and Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Sydney, June 2025.

Digital drawing by Maria Fernanda Cardoso

THE LAST WORD with Shuyin Yang

Interview Mariia Zhuchenko

Director of ART SG Singapore, Shuyin Yang speaks with Sullivan+Strumpf Associate Director, Mariia Zhuchenko on the evolution of the art fair and its influence on the art ecology of Southeast Asia and beyond.

MZ: Congratulations on another successful iteration of ART SG! Now in the third year, how has the mission and vision of ART SG evolved since its launch?

SY: It’s incredible to reflect on how we’ve successfully completed three editions and are now moving into our fourth year. In the first two years— particularly as we launched in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic— our focus was on establishing the fair’s identity, contextual relevance, and commercial success.

Along the way, however, we’ve discovered how meaningful it is to cultivate strong collaborations, not only with galleries, artists, and creators, but also with institutions, foundations, and other nonprofits. We feel a deep resonance with initiatives driven by private collectors, including private museums and foundations that are entering a new phase of growth.

What we are building now is far greater than just an art fair. We are shaping a holistic ecosystem that we hope will not only support and celebrate the fair and Singapore Art Week, but also enhance and spotlight the wider Singaporean and Southeast Asian art landscapes—ultimately creating a nexus through which Southeast Asia connects meaningfully with the global art world.

MZ: Art fairs are often vital convening spaces for the arts ecosystem, fostering a meaningful sense of community. In your view, how has the ethos of community shaped the identity of ART SG?

SY: As mentioned, meaningful collaboration lies at the heart of everything we do. The gallery ecosystems in Singapore, Southeast Asia, and the expanded and connected regions of Australasia and South Asia play a vital role in providing a platform for artistic discovery and emerging practices. As a fair, our aim is to complement this ecosystem by introducing important curators, institutional initiatives, and key programming that can amplify the exceptional work being done by galleries on the ground.

At the same time, the fair has evolved into a venue of facilitating philanthropy. In January 2025, we introduced the SAM ART SG Fund, a benefactor-led fund supporting annual acquisitions for Singapore

Art Museum’s permanent collection of international and Southeast Asian contemporary art. ART SG raised SGD $150,000 for the inaugural launch and committed to support the fund annually for three years. Three significant works were acquired by SAM: Kim Yun Shin, Add Two Add One Divide Two Divide One 2023–6, 2023 (Lehmann Maupin); Kapwani Kiwanga, Magma, 2024 (Goodman Gallery), and Lêna Bùi, Breathing no. 2, 2024 (Galerie Urs Meile). In the forthcoming edition of the fair, we will add on two more initiatives: the TVS Initiative for Indian and South Asian Art, placing a robust spotlight on contemporary art practices hailing from India and South Asia; and the ART SG Futures Prize, of USD $10,000 to be awarded to an outstanding emerging artist presented in the FUTURES sector, selected by a jury of distinguished institutional curators.

This, I believe, is our true valueadd. We curate not only a week of events, but also strive to generate momentum and foster lasting relationships — ones that exhibitors, collectors, and artists can carry forward into the next chapter of their journey.

Kapwani Kiwanaga, Magma, 2024, Handmade ceramic tiles, acrylic paint, rope, metal profile, gold leaf and wood frame 135.7 × 115.5 × 9.5 cm

MZ: Singapore occupies a strategically significant position within Southeast Asia and the broader Asia-Pacific region. What role do you think Singapore plays in the global art dialogue?

SY: There is no other city in Southeast Asia quite like Singapore, which has been uniquely positioned to offer an incredibly convenient and efficient environment for convening, networking, and doing business. The city boasts robust and transparent infrastructure, making it an ideal hub.At the same time, Singapore has a strong institutional presence in the visual arts, with key institutions such as the National Gallery Singapore, Singapore Art Museum, and the Singapore Biennale, which occurs again this year from October 2025 to February 2026. It also has a vibrant gallery scene, with many galleries located in clusters at Gillman Barracks and the Tanjong Pagar District Park, as well as across the city.

Singapore is well placed to serve as a hub for showcasing and promoting Southeast Asian art practices and dialogue, while also highlighting key regional centres of art production in neighbouring countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. It is a fantastic gathering place, extremely supportive of regional connectivity and engagement with the global art world.

MZ: The gallery scene in Singapore has changed significantly in recent years. What do you see for the future of Singaporean galleries?

SY: The recent shifts have been extremely positive. In the past three years, we’ve seen a number of new galleries open spaces in Singapore, some of which represent their second or third international locations, while others are in the process of exploring venues and hiring directors. Other galleries have appointed representatives based in Singapore, even if their permanent spaces are located in Hong Kong, London or elsewhere. Notably, we’ve also seen galleries reopening spaces to gain a stronger presence —such as Sullivan+Strumpf! — which underscores their belief in the strength and significance of Singapore and the broader Southeast Asian region.

MZ: Have you seen a shift in collecting patterns or habits within ART SG’s audience?

SY: We are increasingly seeing a new wave of collectors entering the market. Some are young collectors with strong purchasing power, while

others include a sizable and growing group of mainland Chinese who have relocated to Singapore — among them, private foundation owners. The Indian demographic also represents a significant and active presence within our buying audience.

Exhibitors have additionally noted the presence of Korean expatriates at the fair, who are highly engaged. Importantly, we continue to see growing support from collectors and audiences across Southeast Asia. This year, attendance from the Philippines and Thailand was exceptionally strong.

MZ: Are there any plans you can share with us bout ART SG 2026?

SY: Well firstly ART SG 2026 takes place against the backdrop of two major regional biennales, the Singapore Biennale from 31 October 2025 to 29 March 2026, and the Thailand Biennale from November 2025 to April 2026.

We are pleased to announce a key institutional collaboration and curatorial appointment: X Zhu-Nowell, Executive Director and Chief Curator of Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, will serve as the Film and Performance Art Curator for ART SG 2026. This is part of a broader collaboration with the museum to co-develop programming for the upcoming edition.

The SAM ART SG Fund will return for its second year, alongside the launch of the TVS Initiative for Indian and South Asian Art. In addition, we welcome a new cultural partner: The Institutum, which will present its inaugural collaboration with Hampi Art Labs at ART SG 2026. Based in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Hampi, Karnataka, India, this new residency program will showcase works by artists Robert Zhao and Atul Bhalla that centers on ecological research.

All of this will coincide with Singapore Art Week, featuring a dynamic slate of exhibition openings, symposiums, and the biannual Singapore Art Museum benefit dinner.

Main entrance of SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

Lêna Bùi, Breathing no.2, 2024, ink and watercolour painting on silk and archival paper 122 × 82 × 6 cm (framed)

EXHIBITION DATES

The fourth edition of ART SG, Singapore and Southeast Asia’s leading international art fair, takes place from 23 — 25 January 2026 (VIP Preview on 22 January) at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore. artsg.com

Kim Yun Shin, Add Two Add One Divide Two Divide One 2023-6, 2023, Chinese mahogany, 115 × 23 × 24 cm