Christian Jon Bonett (b. 1975, Bath, England) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working on Gadigal land in Eora/Sydney. Bonett employs installation, ceramic sculpture, painting, and neon elements in his work. His work references iconic Australian cars, road signs, and the urban environments they occupy. Through playful manipulation of context, Bonett provocatively transforms, distorts, and subverts these everyday objects and spaces, challenging our perceptions of these forms to critique and challenge societal constructs of identity, gender, class, consumerism, and environmental concerns.

Bonett holds an MFA (Ceramics) from the National Art School, a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Manchester School of Art, UK and a Bachelor of Art Education from UNSW. He has exhibited in Sydney, London, Manchester and Nantes, and has been selected as a finalist in significant art prizes including the KAAF, Mosman, Paddington, Waverley and Wynne.

Keely Clarke is a skilled printmaker specialising in screenprinting. Her artwork intricately blends colours through the layering technique of the CMYK screenprinting process. This method allows her pieces to encompass a wide range of the colour spectrum, achieved with just three colours. Keely applies a contemporary flair to the traditional printing technique, aiming to push the boundaries of printmaking. Her artistic focus revolves around the concepts of experimentation and exploration, emphasising the interplay of colour and form. Each of Keely’s works contributes to an ongoing series while ensuring that each print remains a unique print.

Notable Exhibitions:

“Virtual Arts Exhibition 3.0″  Shooting Star Gallery, London, August 2023
“Forced Perimeters”  Library Stairwell Gallery, National Art School, Sydney, September 2023
“The Grad Show” National Art School, Sydney, December 2023
“Small Works Art Prize 2024” Brunswick Street Gallery, Brunswick, January 2024

Born 1987 in QLD, Australia and based on Gadigal Land (Sydney), Cribbin expresses predominately through Sculpture, Ceramics, Photography and Installation. Exploring notions around human existence, spirituality, the body, power, architecture, belief systems and identity, her current practice investigates the relationship between the human self and the divine self.

Before embarking on a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Sculpture at the National Art School, Cribbin’s training began in a pottery village in Vietnam, inspiring her to study under several artists in Berlin, China, Indonesia and Australia before completing a Diploma in Ceramics from Gymea TAFE in Sydney, Australia. She further honed her craft of Sculpture at Tom Bass Sculpture Studio, receiving several study scholarships and a teacher traineeship.

With a background in Ceramics, Healing Arts, and Community Services, Cribbin has actively nurtured community connections, advocating support for neurodiversity, mental health and aged and disability care. Since 2017, she has been engaged in the aged and disability sector and in 2018 Cribbin initiated Clay Sessions, pioneering the introduction of ceramic workshops to the Wollondilly Shire. These workshops were designed to offer mindful clay therapy, intertwining art and well-being for the community’s benefit. Continuing her dedication to supportive education, Cribbin has imparted her expertise in Ceramics and Sculpture across various renowned institutions such as Waverley Art School, Campbeltown Art Centre, and Tom Bass Sculpture Studio. Additionally, she has facilitated projects for notable entities like the Sydney Opera House, Little Orange, Headspace, Western Sydney University, Sydenham Edge Festival, and Bellingen Camp Creative.

Cribbin has been a finalist in the Ingenuity Sculpture Festival, Blacktown Art Prize, Tom Bass Figurative Sculpture Prize, and Winner of Sculpture In The Valley, Port Hacking Potters Award and The Harvey Galleries Award.

Ben Fayle (b.1998) is an emerging Australian artist.

Fayle’s painting practice explores the intricacies of memory, nostalgia, and the ephemeral nature of life. In his work, Fayle has delved into the world of ambiguity through hyper realism.

Fayle found himself drawn to flowers, captivated by their ephemeral nature. These delicate blooms, once vivid in colour and beauty, held their allure even in their dead state.

In his recent work, Fayle chose to drench dead roses in a shroud of black enamel paint. This act of covering allowed the materiality of the enamel to create intricate reflections of light on the surface, transforming the subject into an abstract entity. The viewer is initially drawn into the ambiguity of the artwork, with the flowers becoming a subtle, almost concealed presence. By capturing the flowers while the paint was still wet, the reflective quality of the glistening enamel evokes not only sight but also the elusive scent of the flowers, enticing viewers to engage their senses fully.

Fayle further explored this theme of ephemerality by spraying dead sunflowers with vibrant yellow paint, reinvigorating their surface and highlighting the transformative power of colour. Different colours came to symbolise various aspects of transience. Black was used on the roses to symbolise the unknown and the passage into a void, akin to the concept of memento mori—an ever-present reminder of the inevitability of death. In contrast, he retained the original yellow of the sunflowers, as yellow flowers often have a brief blooming period, symbolising the fleeting nature of life. Working with yellow paint, known for its transparency and complexity, allowed Fayle to play with layers that added depth to the works, representing the accumulation of experiences that contribute to the transient nature of the sunflowers.

In Fayle’s exploration of composition, he chose to split the works into various panels. These pieces were intentionally designed to be viewed individually and together, allowing viewers to appreciate smaller segments or as a whole, to capture a fraction of the complete image. This approach encourages viewers to become immersed in the painting, inviting their eyes to wander, avoiding settling on any single point and encouraging them to interpret and explore the artwork at their own pace. The resulting artworks are open to individual interpretation, an image for personal memories and emotions.

Samantha Jade (b. 2000) is an Australian photographic artist living and working within Dharug land of the Eora nation. Jade’s practice materially operates within the garden space, but is applied to a broader ecological framework. The garden is not meerly a physical plot of land, but a metaphysical space for learning, collaborations, and entanglement. Jade’s practice applies the framework of ‘sympoiesis’, or ‘making-with’, to an art context to produce transwordly cameraless images borne from an artist-garden partnership. Informed by ecofeminist ethos, Jade’s investigations seek to reform photography’s taxing material history through the formation of a photographic-permaculture. Such experiments include the development of a compost-based processing technique doubled as garden fertiliser. These images are the outcome of cross-species exchange and mutual sustainment. Although abstract, they speak to a shared language that has been established between artist and garden, one based on ethical connection and a willingness to integrate, without prejudice, into Earth’s wider ecology. Through diverse eco-alchemical photographic processes, Jade’s work argues for the cross-pollination between scholars, scientists, artists, communities, and non-human beings to reconfigure methods of earthly co-living and co-making.

In 2022 Jade won the Standish & Co Scholarship to undertake her MFA at the National Art School, completing the degree in 2023 with a near sell-out exhibition. Her postgraduate work was acquired by the National Art School archive, an archive of only 7000 works dating back to 1920, and the City of Sydney for their contemporary art collection. The collection, which boasts the work of some of Australia’s leading contemporary artists like Tamara Dean and Christian Thompson, is displayed in the City of Sydney Town Hall buildings as a permanent archive. Recent achievements include being a finalist in the 2022 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize held at the Museum of Australian Photography (formally the Monash Gallery of Art) in VIC, receiving the Joel Corrigan Memorial Photography Award (2022), and the Prix Yves Hernot Photography Award (2023).

Naomi McKean is a recent graduate of a Bachelor of Fine Arts program at the National Art School, Sydney, and a recipient of the Harvey Galleries Award for the National Art School Graduates’ Exhibition. Her research has focused on painting and landscape drawing, and her work is rooted in an intuitive and immediate connection to her surrounding environment.

McKean’s drive to become a professional artist was greatly influenced by her background in the communications industry and her passion for travel and literature. She speaks Italian and French, and her previous career as a flight attendant, coupled with extensive travel throughout both countries, have significantly influenced her work.

McKean envisions her artistic journey as a continuous thread, woven into the rich tapestry of Australian art. Her work is a reflection of the past, an ode to the present, and a poised contribution to the ever-evolving narrative of our artistic landscape.

Artist Statement:

Naomi McKean, born 1969, is an Australian painter who resides in Gadigal Land, Sydney. McKean focuses on exploring “vertical landscapes” to illustrate the directional energy of linear spatial relationships and colour fields, underlined with emotion, experience and memory.

Through Hard Edge Abstraction and Colour Field painting, McKean is focused on creating bold, colourful ‘vertical landscapes,’ that explore spatial contrasts and relationships as they reflect her modern urban surroundings.

McKean’s work is informed by the hard abstraction movement of the 60s, and the Kustom Kar Kulture of the hot-rod pinstripers in Tom Wolfe’s 1963 essay, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby. Integral to her work is the hand’s mark and the dynamic contrast between the measured precision of line and the element of chance.

McKean primarily works with acrylic paint on canvas, enjoying the everyday aesthetic and inherent artificiality of the medium. Her compositions are underpinned by a sophisticated balance of line and colour, creating a pleasing rhythm as the eye navigates the painting.

A feature of her paintings is that they are ‘modular’, and can be rearranged or placed horizontally by the viewer. This concept incorporates the Bauhaus principle of combining aesthetics and functionality to address the realities of modern living.

Gemma Williams is an emerging artist based in Eora/Sydney, Australia. Gemma completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School, Sydney in 2023 and was awarded the COSO Architecture Landscape Prize and the Harvey Galleries National Art School Exhibition Prize. Gemma worked for more than two decades as an Art Director on the leading lifestyle magazines Vogue Living, British Vogue and Condé Nast Traveler and has a Bachelor of Visual Communications from the University of Technology, Sydney.

Gemma was born and raised in London, moving to Sydney when she was ten. Her childhood was adventurous and ignited her imagination and interest in nature, creativity, colour and composition. Years of working in magazine design and alongside photographers has shaped her understanding of colour and composition and honed her aesthetic. Her ongoing interest in form and colour led to the decision to leave publishing to explore a more visceral mode of expression through painting.

In 2018 and 2019 she was a finalist in the Waverley Woollahra landscape prize. Her work has been exhibited in group shows at the National Art School and Waverley Woollahra Art School in Sydney and is held in private collections across Australia.

Education:

2020 – 2023 – National Art School Sydney, Bachelor Fine Arts, Painting

2017 – 2019 – National Art school & Waverley Woollahra Art School short courses in ceramics, watercolour and mixed media

1992-1995 – UTS Sydney, Bachelor Visual Communications

Exhibitions:

February 2024 – Harvey Galleries, National Art school group Exhibition prize, Seaforth

December 2023 – National Art School BFA Graduate Exhibition, Darlinghurst, Australia

March 2023 – ‘Margaret Olley Drawing Week Exhibition, 2023’, Rayner Hoff Project Space, National Art School, Darlinghurst Australia

March 2022 – ‘Margaret Olley Drawing Week Exhibition, 2022’, Rayner Hoff Project Space, National Art School, Darlinghurst Australia

March 2021 – ‘Margaret Olley Drawing Week Exhibition, 2021’, Rayner Hoff Project Space, National Art School, Darlinghurst Australia

December 2019- Waverley Woollahra Art School 2019 9×5 Landscape Prize finalist

August 2019 – Watercolours of Waverley Woollahra Art School Exhibition

Awards:

December 2023 – Harvey Galleries National Art School Exhibition Prize

December 2023 – National Art School graduate prize. COSO Architecture Landscape Prize.

December 2019 – Waverley Woollahra Art School 9×5 Landscape Prize finalist

December 2018 – WWAS Highly commended watercolour painting

Collections:

Private collections in Australia and abroad

Employment:

2004 – 2015 – Vogue Living Magazine – Art Director

2003-2004 – British Vogue – Freelance Art Director

1998-2003 – British Conde Nast Traveller – Deputy Art Director

1996-1997 – Good Weekend Magazine – Designer

Eva Ye’s ceramic work serves as a celebration of diversity, skillfully capturing and unravelling the nuanced interplay between identity and heritage. Born in Sydney to a Chinese immigrant family, Ye embarks on a creative journey that intimately explores her bilingual existence in both English and Cantonese, translating it into compelling visual storytelling. Her artistic practice mirrors the intricate emotions and experiences woven into her multicultural identity, manifested in three-dimensional art through figurative objects. This often involves skillful manipulation, navigating the cultural duality of identity and its physical expression. Recent highlights includes It’s a Fairy, a handbuilt figure modelled to the artist’s younger self; Stairwell Gallery group exhibition at the National Art School, New South Wales 2023 and her National Art School graduation showcase, 2023.

Artist Statement:

Eva Ye, born in 2002, is an Australian Chinese artist residing in Sydney, engaging in the realms of ceramics and drawing. Her artistic pursuits transcend personal narratives, aiming to connect with individuals from diverse backgrounds. Ye’s current focus lies in hand-building figurative objects, stemming from the exploration of a diasporic cultural experience. Through a delicate fusion of tradition and modernity, past and present, she captures the everyday mundaneness of life. The use of paper mache in her artistic practice reflects a nuanced relationship with her younger self and responds to the recurring themes of ‘cute’ and ‘delicate’ symbolism in her art.

Serving as an homage to the West’s aesthetic impact on the East, Ye reflects on the dynamic tension of growing up ‘differently’ from peers. The concept of “inbetween” seeks to give form to the intangible, express the inexpressible, and honour the vibrant tapestry of life, weaving together the fabric of culture and identity. Each piece stands as a unique narrative, commenting on the amalgamation of cultural influences.