Three new exhibitions opening at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery showcase contemporary artworks that reflect on the importance of culture, connection and perception.
The exhibitions include a new installation by Deanna Hitti, a response to the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art by Michele Elliot, and dreamlike works from the UWA Art Collection.
Hitti is an Australian artist with Lebanese heritage who works across printmaking and sculpture to investigate representations of the Middle East, cultural memory and the materiality of domestic space.
Centred around a lavishly ornamented banquet setting, Mezze is both a large-scale installation and an activated social space where the audience contributes to the evolution of the artwork.
In Held: On care and collections, artist Michele Elliot responds to works in the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art, guided by her ethics of care and ideas around social responsibility and connection.
Strange Sensation explores the theme of the uncanny, bringing together contemporary artworks from the UWA Art Collection that blur thresholds of perception and memory and disturb our sense of the familiar.
The exhibitions are supported by a public program, which includes a cyanotype printing workshop, royal icing workshop, artist talks and curator tours.
LWAG Director Dr Theo Costantino said the upcoming exhibitions were deeply reflective responses to the contemporary moment.
“Deanna Hitti’s Mezze invites audiences to reflect on the intergenerational, multicultural stories that shape Australian identity and food culture,” Dr Costantino said.
“The importance of human connection, like that which can grow through sharing a meal, teaching a skill or hearing someone’s story, is embedded in the exhibition.
“Michele Elliot’s exhibition is similarly grounded in relationships, particularly women artists’ sharing of knowledge and how these legacies are held in art collections, where the trace of their labour is preserved.
“Strange Sensation is a visually compelling but also emotionally resonant exhibition that presents contemporary artworks that explore perception, memory and discomfort.
“In a time of uncertainty and an image-saturated world, it asks audiences to reflect on why representations exert such a powerful effect on our bodies and emotions.”
The exhibitions open at LWAG at 6pm on Thursday 30 July and run until Saturday 19 September. The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 4pm and admission is free.
For more information or to register for the opening night please visit the gallery website.
Images top: Siné MacPherson, Banksia flower colours, 2007, oil on canvas, 122 x 152 cm, Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art, UWA. Deanna Hitti, K is for Kitab Tabakh (cookbook) (detail), 2024, Counihan Gallery. Credit: Christian Capurro. Rodney Glick, Defaced [defaced], 2005-2007, altered colour photograph, 72.3 x74 cm, UWA Art Collection, University Senate Grant, 2008, © the artist.