Platform Gallery

28 June - 15 July

Join us for the opening Friday 5.30pm 28 June. 

Blue Mountains’ artist Glenice Ware is inspired by the strength and fragility of the Australian landscape. ‘To me the land is an amazing, naturally formed work of art, then we come along and make marks and changes in order to control, understand and make relevant.’ Ware often immerses herself in landscape to begin the art process - drawing, painting, using sticks, red earth, mud, rusty iron and paint to mark paper and fabric. In the studio, she continues the work ‘defining and redefining the story of (her) environment with marks, symbols, colour and materials.’

Residencies in the Broken Hill region, Capertee Valley and Bundanon, near Nowra, have informed her current work. For her exhibition at Platform Gallery, Ware made a conscious decision not to make any ‘new’ work, preferring to refine and repurpose existing work and give it new life. She has been digging into her drawers of ideas, finished and unfinished works – mapping a deeper layer of her wanderings to create two- and three- dimensional works.

Join us at the exhibition opening to celebrate Glenice's beautiful collection of textiles, painting and sculpture. ​

Interview by Margot Turner. 

7 – 24 June 2019

Join us for the opening Friday 7 June at 5.30pm. 

Blue Mountains’ artist Cate Dudley has been sharing her work with us for over thirty years. Cate portrays herself in nature and domestic settings with friends, creatures, and beasts, exploring themes of courage, gratitude, compassion, kindness, friendship. Her intrinsically personal works can be perceived as a metaphor for the human condition: “an exploration of what it is to be human with all the beauty, vulnerabilities and paradoxes,” according to Cate.
 
To prepare for her upcoming exhibition at Platform Gallery, Cate explored fragments of previous life, through collage and reuse of etchings. You will still find her walking through blue mountains landscapes, embracing earth and bathing in waterholes; and interacting with the beasts - bathing them, juggling them and dancing on them.

“This body of work is my visual vaccination against the malady of wanting to have more, do more, be more,” says Cate. “It’s an honouring of the hush and hold moments of the artistic process and life - everyday moments of love, humour, pain and tenderness.”
 
“Drawing, for me, is a direct way of making sense of what I’m seeing, feeling and thinking. From a drawing, I might make a dry-point by scratching into a surface, inking it up and putting it through the etching process. The process of printmaking adds unexpected contributions to an image. The process of painting is a little different - it seems to be more of a conversation about where things need to go”.
 
Join us for the exhibition opening at Platform Gallery at 5.30pm on Friday 7 June 2019. 

Interview by Margot Turner. 
​

17 May - 3 June

Join us for the opening night on Friday 17 May at 5.30pm. 

In a tribute to wilderness areas in NSW, Kanangra Nights and Autumn Orchids explores light and darkness in these magnificent places, and orchid species that flower in autumn.
 
Local artist and printmaker Freedom Wilson, of the renowned Laughing Bird Studios, has created a body of work inspired by on-location drawings throughout March and April 2019 in the Kanangra Boyd National Park.
 
Hiking is a large part of Freedom’s creative practice. In response to the experience and beauty of Australia’s National Parks, she draws, designs, and silk screen prints onto best quality papers and linens to create accessible art and heirloom textiles.

Freedom calls herself a ‘forager, collector of natural found objects, a drawer, printmaker and raw textile lover’ who is ‘enamoured by the beautiful Australian bush.’ Join us for Freedom’s latest exhibition Kanangra Nights and Autumn Orchids, featuring silkscreen prints, mono prints and drawings inspired by local nature.  

26 April – 13 May

Join us for the exhibition opening at 5.30pm on Friday 26 April. 
 
“My art is about the alchemy of change and reinvention,” says Blue Mountains artist, Carmel Gold. “I create works that examine both our individual journeys and our collective humanity.”
 
“My work also explores the complexity of our relationship with the natural world. I gather materials that are often discarded or seen as useless, and I trawl through these amazing bits until something starts to come together with something else. I aim to have minimal impact on the objects in order to retain the story within the history of any given piece.”
 
Carmel creates sculpture and assemblage from the found objects, which include wood, metal, toys, figurines and lights. The artworks often take on a human, animal or totemic form, or are a visual representation of a journey, with each object serving as metaphor.

5 - 22 April

Join us for the exhibition opening at 5.30pm, Friday 5 April. 

“How do we find genuine connection, healing and love in a system designed to commodify even the workings of the heart?” asks artist, writer and filmmaker Emma Magenta. 

Emma attempts to answer this question in her exhibition, Love in the Time of Capitalism. This collection of works and writing deal with the struggles and victories of the heart in an era where human misery is exploited for profit.

“I am interested in the fracturing of the human psyche, such as with our masculine and feminine selves, and how this translates into the selling of idealistic romance to trap the human heart into a cycle of disillusionment,” says Emma. ​

15 March - 1 April 

Join us for the exhibition opening on Friday 15 March, 5.30 - 7 pm.

​“I had been doing lots of reading about witches and the witch hunts, particularly in Salem” says photographer and artist Nina Lipscombe. “I was inspired by the women behind the sinister stories of the past. I wanted to showcase some of the modern day ‘witches’ I know – young and old – in order to summon up dialogue around these powerful women and what it really means to be a witch.”

For this body of work, Nina has taken photographic portraits of local women, ranging in age from 8 to 80, and used her painting background to transform the portraits into magic realism photo essays about the essence of womanhood.

“My process was basically a merge of my photography and fine art. I took multiple shots of different models and places, and put them into photoshop in order to combine everything and paint the beautiful and surreal scenes.”

Nina has used her love of nature and fantasy, and the history of the witch trials, and combined them to make a comment on the abiding way society views women who live in harmony with nature as a threat. Her photos are a celebration of the power of women, nature and sisterhood.

“The idea that I can take myself wherever I want to go or be whoever I want to be, that is what motivates me to continue to create. I love showing people a piece of me that I can’t even see myself unless I am creating. To share something beautiful with the world or even with one person – that is what makes me the happiest.”

Each of Nina's incredible artworks are sold as framed, limited edition photographs. Please get in touch for sales enquiries. 

22 Feb – 11 March
 
Artist and designer Tania Bowers has always been inspired by the natural world. She works intensively with plants to combine nature and couture, creating beautiful objects from the fabric she hand-dyes, sews and sculpts. 
 
“I am obsessed with colour and nature, and I use plant dyes from all different seasons and regions of the world,” says Tania. “My textiles contain tannin from trees, powders from roots, memories, mistakes, touch, stories and surprises.”
 
“I dye each piece of fabric with a combination of plant dyes, herbs, petals and rusty objects. I sew and embellish the fabric to turn it into objects, such as silk flowers, curtains, wall hangings, as well as everyday objects such as scarves and cushions.”
 
Tania is the ultimate creative polymath. Not only does she have a flourishing art and design practice, but she is also an in-demand hair and makeup stylist, and a critically acclaimed singer-songwriter, having released three albums under her stage name, Via Tania.  
 
When Tania is not making textiles, she can be found dressing up with her daughter, writing songs and spending time with her family. She has a studio in the corner of the yard where she makes her textiles and keeps all her things. “It is nearly always messy and lovely at the same time,” she says.
 
I Dreamed a Dream Only Dreamers Dream is an exhibition of dreamy, delicate textiles, each a work of art that has been lovingly hand-dyed and hand-stitched by Tania.
 
Join us for the opening at 5.30pm on Friday 1st March.  

1 - 18 February

Join us at the opening of Full Circle at 5.30pm Friday 1st February and you can view the full range of Nicole's artworks here. 

“This exhibition explores my ongoing interest in working within parameters or limitations - the idea of blooming where one is planted,” says artist and designer Nicole Law.
 
“My artistic practice centres around repetitive, meditative drawing and mark-making - work which belies its apparent simplicity to become more than the sum of its parts. By creating with a deliberately restricted colour and material palette, the number of decisions that need to be made in any given piece are minimised - the luxury of no choice.”
 
Nicole’s style of working within parameters grew out of necessity: as a mother of two small children she had to confine her art making to what was accessible in 10-minute windows, that she could easily pick up and put down again.

​“Waiting for a huge uninterrupted stretch of time to explore my deepest creative urges wasn’t an option. ‘Small and often’ became my mantra, and over time, those little 10 and 20-minute windows grew into a substantial body of work. It is the art of the incremental.”

Nicole is well known for her striking white-on-black illustrations. Now, using her same parameters of limited time, black and white palette and humble materials, she has begun to draw on found canvases and objects rescued from op-shops.
 
“I’m exploring ideas of multiple incarnations and the layering of experience. These objects have all passed through other hands and lives, and I now add to their history by drawing on them with meditative care.”
 
Nicole’s exhibition title, Full Circle, refers to both the physical form of many of her drawings, with recurring circular motifs; and the journey of pre-loved objects back into circulation.
 
Join us to celebrate this powerful, meditative exhibition, which opens on Friday 1st February.