Intimate Imaginaries

The term ‘imaginaries’ is commonly used to describe realms of pure invention or flights of fancy, but it can also refer to more everyday creative activity: how we perceive, shape and make sense of ourselves and the world around us. This open-ended conception is one that accords with the ethos of APA where ‘art is not taught, but rather the innate creative direction of each artist is nurtured to elicit works of personal meaning and style’. In this spirit, Intimate Imaginaries brings together bodies of work by a range of artists who each express a compelling, richly inventive and deeply felt worldview.

By turns ingenious, irreverent, poignant and joyful, many featured works convey the artist’s personal perspectives on everyday environments, interactions and phenomena. From the autobiographical to the observational, the works of artists such as Lisa Reid, Anthony Romagnano, Cathy Staughton and Terry Williams, reveal the multiple ways in which we can be intimately and imaginatively entangled with each other and with places and things in the world. Other artists, such as Fulli Andrinopoulos, Wendy Dawson and Julian Martin employ abstract shapes, vivid colour and highly tactile forms of mark-making to evoke emotive, intangible and interior states of being. While the exhibiting artists utilise a range of media and processes in their works—including painting, drawing, ceramics, soft sculpture and video—they all share a distinctive handmade aesthetic.

Bringing together early and recent works alongside several new commissions, Intimate Imaginaries includes: Samraing Chea’s highly detailed drawings that depict humorous observations and wry social commentary on daily life; Alan Constable’s hand-modelled, wet-finish colour glazed ceramic cameras; Bronwyn Hack’s carefully crafted fabric models of human anatomy; Julian Martin’s refined abstract pastel compositions distilled from found imagery; Chris O’Brien’s sculptures, videos and zines which convey mischievous personal narratives on suburban life; Lisa Reid’s meticulous and lovingly-rendered ceramics and works on paper evoking familial memories; Cathy Staughton’s colourful paintings of Luna Park that interweave autobiography and fantastical dream imagery; and Terry Williams’s hand-stitched, improvisational renditions of everyday objects.