Affordable Art Fair Melbourne 2023

31 August – 3 September 2023

The Royal Exhibition Building Nicholson Road, Carlton, VIC Booth F7

Anne–Marie Zanetti

Anne-Marie Zanetti uses simple, flowing elements, as well as rich colour, tone, and detail to create her contemporary, expressive oil paintings. Her figurative and still-life paintings are inspired by beauty, saturated in light, and rendered in layers of fine smooth brushstrokes so as not to distract from the overall drama of the composition.

Through her conversation with paint, she is continuously exploring and transforming her emotional landscape. In her works, she aims to highlight the preciousness of objects and moments in time that might otherwise seem insignificant… creating an intimate atmosphere of the artist’s own personal experience and inviting the viewer to share in her unique vision.

From which do we attain our maturity - inside out or outside in?

Steve Rosendale

Nostalgia and atmospheric drama are captured with a gripping reality in Steve Rosendale’s recognizable retro oil paintings.

The seemingly simple photographic realism leads you into an engaging narrative whilst the cinematographic lighting enhances the true essence of the moment. It’s impossible not to fall into the glamour of a bygone era that hints of a vague recollection of vintage film and memories past.

The subjects alone do not tell the whole story, it’s the carefully considered palette with enhancing light effects that adds the final magical impact.

A Steve Rosendale artwork is more than a painting, it is a doorway into the realms of remembrance, a trigger for past times, escapism with a hint of glamour .

The Guava Room Oil on Canvas 62cm x 62cm SOLD

Mitchell Cheesman

Mitchell Cheesman is beginning his artistic career and the future looks bright. With thoughtfulness and a thirst for knowledge as he immerses himself in the arts, music, literacy and resonating artistic practices, which seem unstoppable at this juncture in his life.

Luscious, oozing impastos are recognisable in an instant. With subtle nuances in colour and texture, the florals have melted into the surroundings, the backgrounds become the forefronts. Exciting architectural elements with geometrical edges juxtapose the rounded swathes of oils. Soft, edgy, delicious and bold, relatable and immersible. Less obvious, but so, so much more.

To own a Mitch Cheesman is to have a painting, a sculpture, a story and even some music playing lightly somewhere in the distance.

Jo Young

“In the development of my compositions, I derive inspiration from the art of the Dutch Baroque, Flemish and French 18th Century still life painters. The classical painting technique of this period involves a slow process including a sepia tonal underpainting, followed by consecutive layers of local colour and finally transparent glazes.”

“Like characters in theatre, objects are carefully staged in an intimate space… Drama is created by emphasis, highlights, reflections and shadows. In the depiction of silk, porcelain, fruit, silver and wood, I wish to explore the intrinsic qualities of the objects through tone, texture, mood and atmosphere.”

Radicchio and Vase I Oil on Linen

30cm x 30cm Framed $2,500

Radicchio and Vase II Oil on Linen

30cm x 30cm Framed $2,500

20cm x 20cm Framed SOLD

Ben Hedström

Ben Hedström’s body of work responds to environments that have become familiar over a long period of time. A relationship with the landscape is developed through everyday encounters and experiences.

This rapport reinforces memory and serves as a documentation of somatic grounding, the psychological importance of the physicality of feeling your feet on the ground. Landscape images transcend their aesthetic value and become insights into the metaphysical –principles of being, identity, change, space and time.

Hedström’s work represents fleeting vignettes of contemplation, suggesting a conflation between the ebullience of connecting with the natural world and melancholy meditations on the fragility of existence.

Melissa Ladkin

Melissa is a contemporary Aboriginal artist living on Bundjalung country, Northern NSW. A proud descendant of the Awabakal / Wonnarua / Bundjalung peoples, Mel has been caring for country most of her life.  From a young age, Mel experienced a deep and intuitive connection to the land. She felt the earth speak to her and was moved by the richness and depth of the colours that form the many ochres she has come across over time.

For the past 30 + years Mel has worked in the bush, with native plants, trees & their habitats as a land conservationist and has always been fascinated with geology, rocks, minerals and soils.  Working specifically with ochre, the careful and respectful collection to the processing is a significant and alchemical process, they are slowly blended and formed into pigment for painting.

This is a very personal journey, a time of deep connection and acknowledgement of all that have come before her. Mel’s collection of artworks has evolved with much thought, care and respect. Her practice speaks of an ancient wisdom, and she hopes her work will inspire others to open to the spirit of the land and to the rich culture and knowledge that it holds.

Leonie Barton

Everyone has now traversed periods of confinement, everyone as a whole has now experienced boundaries and parameters, limitations that at the time, now and perhaps in the future, have no defined end date. Each of us involuntarily had to find a way, a process or a system to navigate staying inside the lines. I compartmentalised all of it. It is my nature to package each department of my life, so I can look for some control over it. I stack and arrange them, so everything can be separate but live alongside each other. But, where are the edges, how hard can I push up against them, are they soft to lean on, or rigid and sharp. Can I move them around, so I can be more comfortable …. Geometrically Speaking?

A Warmer Cubby Oil Pigment and Wax on Board 20cm x 20cm Framed $1,000

Not all the Mountains are Blue Oil Pigment and Wax on Board 20cm x 20cm Framed

$1,000

Earthy Blankets

Oil Pigment and Wax on Board

20cm x 20cm Framed

$1,000

Darren White

Darren White is a contemporary painter who is driven by the ability to be drawn into his memory bank through the simple action of putting paint on canvas. Through the process of creating an artwork, Darren is led by an experience of his past - it could be a feeling, landscape, weather event or a conversation that he is revisiting, re-interpreting and recapturing in a new form. What interesting about memories is that details are stripped back when we recall something, and instead, we allow ourselves to be guided by the feelings we felt at a particular moment. Although linked to a memory, the abstraction in Darren’s paintings allow the observer to find their own ties to the work, creating a personal connection between the viewer and the viewed. Darren primarily uses acrylics and oil sticks on canvas and works from his home studio in Peregian Beach, Queensland.

Rhonda Cao

Rhonda works exclusively with the human form in bronze . She has discovered an original language in her personal response to the nude form. The human body is a subject much explored in the history of art, she feels confident that she has developed something totally new and original. Rhonda focuses on its abstract qualities, reducing the form to elegant curves and angles making each body appear simultaneously both weightless and grounded.

Rhonda loves working with the human form and find the shape, movement and expression that can be achieved by stylising this form exciting and inspirational. she feels the blend of movement, abstraction and balance challenging and loves exploring where this challenge will lead.

Rhonda considers her work to be stylised and am very much influenced by the classical heroic figurative form. Her desire is for her work to be about form and mood and hopefully viewers are compelled to touch and feel the lines for themselves. Working with the male form is a particularly interesting challenge – how to stylise without parody and how to simplify shape the movement that is uniquely male.

Rhonda rarely uses any armatures or structure when creating her pieces as they are too restricting. Often the piece she has been working on has been triggered by a scribble and it does not really have form until she plays around and develops it. There is a price to pay for this – there have been many a morning when Rhonda has come back into her studio to find the piece has broken or tipped over during the night. Rarely does it destroy the piece – it just creates a new version and even a different direction.

Sunburnt – Bruce and Barry Bronze

5cm x 35cm x 48cm Edition 1/19

$6,000

Dai Li

Dai Li’s inspiration is drawn from everyday life, art and culture and the observation of people’s responses to the world around them.

Her work focuses on situational responses with human emotional states observed, how these manifest externally, and the mystery of how they arrived at this point. This is manifested in her ceramic characters which may seem humorous and childish but at the same time thought-provoking.

Often the works explore everyday situations, with normal activities but always evoking an intriguing window into the quirkiness of individuals and often including a cheeky, knowing expression. So much can be expressed through the smallest glance or the coolest accessory.

Sunnies & Scarf

Stoneware Glazed

24cm x 14cm x 12cm

$1,800

Sweet Orange

Stoneware Glazed

21cm x 14cm x 12cm

Tin Fish #6

Stoneware Glazed

6cm x 18.5cm x 12cm

$1,200

Tin Fish #7

Stoneware Glazed

5cm x 17.5cm x 9cm $1,200

Mireia Serra

Through contemporary bronze and iron sculpture, I have achieved my own style, personal iconography and methodology. My universe includes symbolic elements: maps, globes, staircases, seas of methacrylate, books... The details of my characters present situations and frames that are to be read in depth and complicity, which allows me to capture abstract concepts, feelings, sensations and everything that flows inside my inner world.

Sometimes I try to transform everyday dilemmas into something beautiful: with a little artwork, that captures the beauty of a moment. I confess that a point of intrigue can be breathed in some of my sculptures. They show stories, dreams and illusions and I try to approach them subtly. The main character of my stories are very everyday elements and situations that show snapshots full of emotions and feelings of the journey of life: women taking their time to decide at a crossroads of their life, men enjoying their moments of relaxation, small pleasures, moments of pause, meditation, little epiphanies... Behind a precise description of reality, there is a meditated story, which each one can read his own way...

Erin Conron

Erin Conron completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts, with a major in glass, at the Canberra School of Art in 2007 and her Honours year in 2008.  Since graduating, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions nationally and internationally. In 2008, she was a finalist in the Ranamok Glass Prize and in 2012 was awarded the McGrath Emerging Artist Award from the Capital Arts Patrons Organisation.  Most recently she was the winner of the Queanbeyan City Art Prize, and a finalist in the 2021 Byron Arts Magazine Prize, the 2018 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize and the 2017 Hindmarsh Glass Prize.

Erin’s work has been acquired by Australia’s National Art Glass Collection as well as the European Museum of Modern Glass in Germany, and the Kaplan-Ostergaard Glass Collection at Palm Springs Art Museum.

Lune Blown Glass with Multi Fired Enamel 23cm x 22cm x 22cm $1,900

Web Blown Glass with Multi Fired Enamel 23cm x 22cm x 22cm $1,900

Flux Blown Glass with Multi Fired Enamel 16cm x 16cm x 16cm $1,500