Exhibition review: Characters, Hayden’s Gallery

In its closing weeks, the exhibition Characters at Hayden’s Gallery in East Brunswick, Melbourne, showcases art by a group of mid-career Australian women artists: Mira Gojak, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Julie Irving, Amalia Lindo, Kerrie Poliness and Mia Salsjö. The exhibition’s themes emphasise connectivity, performativity and translation. There’s a lot to love for diehard fans of conceptual art in this converted warehouse space, which features some of the most exciting artists-in-residence Australia has to offer. 

Hayden’s supports a new generation of artists by facilitating private and institutional acquisitions, providing opportunities to invest in the experimental, critical and socially engaged art practices that shape the landscape of contemporary art in Australia.

Hayden’s combines cutting-edge presentation, with the homely collaborative feel of a cubby house-like studio that allows artists to work collaboratively as well as exhibit in groups.

Gallery Director Hayden Stuart previously worked at the Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), and this is an important entry point for this show, which launches with new works by Agatha Goethe-Snape, whose abstract paintings were a feature of the MUMA show The Outcome is Certain.

The exhibition represents Goethe-Snape’s experimentation with conceptual painting and drawing as a series of works meditate on the nature of change. Crisis meeting is especially arresting, with its red, almost water-coloured field of crimson superimposed with geometric shapes that asks us contemplate how form takes up space.

Mira Gojak’s series in many ways mirrors Goethe-Snape’s thematic preoccupations. Her series of abstracts privilege form and colour, bringing cloud-like resonances to shapes that could be Matisse jazz cutouts, themselves in a range of shades that reference Yves Klein blue. These 10 images are easy to get lost in and drift away from, like clouds in the sky, and they stand in counterpoint to the geometric line drawings of Julie Irving and Kerrie Poliness.

Finally, two artists show how mixing media and asking conceptual questions about the philosophy of art can create works of intricate beauty. Amalia Lindo’s line drawings make use of a layering technique, as well as AI, to create ethereal conceptual landscapes that are as much about the process of drawing as they are about perspectives. Here too, there are in communion with Mia Salsjö’s intricate line drawings that combine architectural plans and their musical representation.

Read: Exhibition review: Odalala, nireekshane and Uyirvu, Arts House

If you are looking for a niche art experience in Melbourne’s north, Hayden’s is among the best of its type, combining a warehouse space with a delicate, pensive atmosphere of works that speak to each other.

Characters

Featuring:
Mira Gojak, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Julie Irving, Amalia Lindo, Kerrie Poliness, Mia Salsjö will be exhibited at Hayden’s Gallery, Brunswick East, Victoria until 11 May 2024.