UNFATHOMABLE: Jackie Gorring, Minna Graham, Ella Hughes, Chandra Paul and Dannielle Wilkinson

10am-4pm, Saturday and Sunday, 7 – 22 December

UNFATHOMABLE – deep, inexplicable, confounding, lost.

Some things are just too hard to find words for. Too raw to be exposed. Too difficult to unpack. Featuring new work by 5 central victorian artists, this exhibition at Lot 19 Gallery in Castlemaine takes that which is hard to explain and transforms it into challenging, beautiful, messy, and inspiring artworks – this is how we talk about the things that are unfathomable.

Minna Graham (Musk, 3461) responds to the emotions within grief that feel too overwhelming. Grief, loss, and sorrow can be too much to hold inside. Minna creates physical forms—vessels, containers—that embody these feelings, giving them a tangible space where they can exist and be processed. These pieces are not about finding answers, but about creating space to hold what cannot always be said.

Jackie Gorring’s (Allendale, 3364) relief prints are each a story, like chapters in a book they come together to form something more complete and deeper than the individual story can tell by itself. Jackie chose these relief prints for Unfathomable because they represent the loss of loved ones or friends who have moved away, or the loss of herself at times.

Ella Hughes (Guildford, 3451) has created a small army of golems to hold her grief. A golem will do the work its master asks of it, and it will keep doing it forever. “There is a culture of shame around grief,” she says. “we’re criticised for grieving too much or too little, too loudly, or too quietly.” Ella has also created sculptural works that are part homage, part portrait, and part commemoration. Like a statue that would be created for a famous person, these pieces pay a very personal homage to the women in her life who gifted her a love of craft, textiles and making. Ella Hughes lives in Guildford but makes ceramics in her studio at Lot 19 in Castlemaine.

Working with found clay from around central Victoria Chandra Paul (Clunes, 3370) has conducted numerous experiments to make vessels from the very ground beneath her. This is a highly technical and multilayered process that takes extraordinary amounts of time. Chandra says that her experiences have taught her that there is beauty in the weathered, uneven, transient and unfinished. Flaws are meaningful, normal and harbour memory.

Dannielle Wilkinson’s (Castlemaine, 3450) work for this exhibition, My father called me barren, explores the unique relationship between women and their reproductive system….in particular, the fact that these are the only organs in the body that we are asked if we are using them or wasting them. Every woman will have a distinctly individual relationship with this part of their body and will respond differently to conversation and questions that surround it, and every one of those relationships is valid and should be heard.

These artworks have the capacity to handle the complexity of emotions that we find hard to articulate or bear. In many ways the artworks are better at expressing our innermost thoughts and feelings than we are ourselves.

Opening Celebration: 2pm, Saturday 7 December