Summer '26.: N.Smith Gallery

Thea Anamara Perkins is an Arrernte and Kalkadoon artist whose practice incorporates portraiture and landscape to question representations of First Nations peoples and Country. With a delicate hand, Thea answers heavy questions about what it means to be First Nations in contemporary Australia, and interrogates portrayal.

Thea’s middle name Anamara is an Arrernte word that describes a river and a Dreaming that runs north of Mparntwe (Alice Springs) – the place that keeps calling her back and has been the wellspring of art and activism for her family, and by extension, the nation. Perkins continues her family’s commitment to what she calls “strong and ready communication” and is part of an extraordinary dynasty of First Nations activists and creatives that includes activist Charles Perkins (her grandfather), Arrernte elder Hetti Perkins (her great-grandmother), curator Hetti Perkins (her mother) and acclaimed film director Rachel Perkins (her aunt).

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Louise Zhang is an Australian multidisciplinary artist working across painting, sculpture, and installation. Her practice investigates the interplay of aesthetics and cultural identity, often embracing contrasts to evoke a sense of otherness. Drawing inspiration from mythology and botany, Zhang weaves together symbols and motifs into compositions that balance harmony with dissonance.

Materially, her practice is highly considered, paying great attention to her choices in paint, she utilises the historical and instinctive associations of colour to create visual dichotomies from her subjects. In the sweeping visual landscapes of her work, the textural consideration of her paint creates windows into another world, some elements of her works are within our grasp and others remain deeper within. As a deconstruction of the world around her, she weaves together symbols from reality and memory, transforming them into something more lucid and surreal, documenting identity in the process of its own making.

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From across a room, Holly Anderson’s paintings appear to swim in the brightness of a clear sky. Bursts of sunlight populate familiar subject matter – interiors, figures, skies, and water are monochromic planes pierced with white light...

Anderson’s painting practice explores sensory encounters between light and landscape. Moving between figuration and abstraction, her brushstrokes form geometric, often monochromatic compositions whose flatness intensifies their subtle realism. Sunlight is central to her work – flashes of white disrupt gridded surfaces of stripes and squares, bending and scattering form. Familiar subjects emerge through the glare, developing a visual language attuned to the brilliance of the Australian sun.

Recent exhibitions include the Museum of Brisbane and Firstdraft. She has been a finalist in the JADA Prize and Brisbane Portrait Prize, among others, and her work is held in public and private collections. Anderson completed a BFA (Hons) at the Queensland College of Art, where she now teaches sessionally.

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Working as a collaborative duo since 2001, Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro’s practice reflects a preoccupation with the dynamics of global mobility, fallout of consumer society, and contemporary notion of home.

Combining playful humour with art historical references, the duo transform prefabricated structures and readymade materials, from Lego and IKEA furniture to car parts and architectural fragments, into ambitious sculptures and installations defined by deconstruction and reinvention.

Winners of the Sulman Prize in 2022, Claire & Sean have exhibited widely in Australia and internationally. Their installation Life Span featured in Australia’s presentation at the 53rd Venice Biennale, and they have participated in major exhibitions including the Auckland Triennial, the Australian Biennial of Art, and the Oku-Noto Triennale, Japan. Their work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions across leading institutions in Australia, Europe, and the United States.

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Fiona Lowry’s practice has explored the complexity of the human condition. Through the use of airbrushed pastels and monochromatic colour palettes, Lowry’s images maintain an overarching softness and ambiguity.

Her paintings of the Australian landscape depict the bush as both alluring and unsettling. Rendered in dreamlike colour and diffused through her distinctive technique, these scenes become surreal theatres for human intervention, charged with unease and quiet menace.

A winner of the Archibald, Moran Portrait, and Fleurieu Landscape Prizes, her work is held in major collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Portrait Gallery, and The University of Queensland Art Museum.

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Kyra Mancktelow is a proud Quandamooka artist with strong cultural ties to Eulo and the South Sea Islander community of Vanuatu. Working across printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, and bronze casting, her multidisciplinary practice brings cultural stories to life through distinct material languages.

Grounded in heritage and lived experience, her work shares knowledge, challenges colonial narratives, and explores identity, memory, and resilience with both poetic subtlety and emotional depth.

Currently undertaking a PhD at the Queensland College of Art, Kyra exhibits nationally. She won the 2021 Telstra Emerging Artist Award at the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards and received a Special Commendation at the 2021 Churchie National Emerging Art Prize.

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Tom Blake’s practice draws on fragmented moments, looped imagery and recurring motifs as potential sites for contemplating the psychological, architectural and technological frameworks that surround us.

Christopher Zanko is an artist based in the Illawarra/Dharawal region of the New South Wales south coast. Drawing on the architecture and culture of his hometown, he reimagines suburban environments through a distinctive, deeply personal lens.

Influenced by Japanese woodblock carving, Zanko focuses on the details that shape domestic identity – from red brick facades to tyre swans and terrazzo porches. Through meticulous, meditative carving, he preserves these quiet suburban markers as enduring records of place and memory.

A finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Sulman and Wynne Prizes, and the King’s School Art Prize, his work is held in major collections including the White Rabbit Collection, Museums of History NSW, Wollongong Art Gallery, and the University of Wollongong.

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Joshua Charadia is a Sydney-based artist who explores the nature of consciousness and perception. He translates his photographs of the built environment and its inhabitants into paintings and drawings to reveal their latent visual complexity, capturing moments of the sublime in the everyday. His characteristic use of motion blur serves as an extended metaphor for our contemporary experience of the world, offering fleeting fragments of observation which oscillate between realism and abstraction.

Charadia won the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing in 2023, and has been a finalist in numerous art prizes, including the Jacaranda Drawing Award (2022), Sulman Prize (2020) and Dobell Drawing Prize (2021, 2019). In 2021 he was awarded the Fisher's Ghost Art Award South West Sydney Award, in 2020 he was awarded People’s Choice at the Adelaide Perry Prize, and in 2018 won 2nd place at the Belle ArtStart Prize. His works are held in the National Art School collection and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, The United Kingdom, & USA.

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Blending childhood nostalgia with long-standing East Asian ceramic traditions, Chen applies his imagery to hand-thrown plates and vases, which are then fused with geometric patterns from traditional sources. The result is a cultural pastiche, and a dynamic conversation between traditional craft and contemporary perspective.

Casey’s recent work draws upon imagery and motifs from the archetypal tales of the four great classic novels of Chinese literature: Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber. His resulting works are both a self-exploration and an homage to the rich and enduring history of Chinese porcelain craft and Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints.

Chen graduated from the National Art School in December 2020 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree majoring in ceramics, and was the recipient of the annual Harvey Galleries National Art School Exhibition award. Casey has been a finalist in numerous awards, and won the Muswellbrook Art Prize 2023.

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