Official Opening Event Fri 9 June, 6pm
Exhibition runs 10 - 24 June 2023
Artist Talk Sat 17 June (time tbc)


Artists: Desmond Mah (curator), Patricia Amorim, Shanti Gelmi, Deborah Worthy-Collins and Tami Xiang

The exhibition ‘(Re)Borrowing Arrows with Thatched Boats’ centres around the Chinese idiom or chengyu "草船借箭". This chengyu was coined from a military strategy developed by Zhuge Liang during the Three Kingdoms Period in China. The strategy involved using decoy boats filled with straw to trick the enemy into wasting their arrows, which were later retrieved and used to launch a successful attack.
Chengyu are idiomatic expressions in the Chinese language that encapsulate cultural, historical, and philosophical concepts in a concise and memorable way. They have been used in literature, poetry, and everyday conversation for centuries. However, despite the presence of Chinese Diaspora in Western Australia, this aspect of Chinese culture is not visible to the broader public.
Patricia Amorim, Shanti Gelmi, Desmond Mah, Deborah Worthy-Collins and Tami Xiang will use 草船借箭 as a catalyst to navigate their worlds, and process their personal histories, experiences and memories. These Boorloo-based artists will produce their body of works collectively as a poetic metaphor.

Image Credit: illustration from Selected Pictorial Stories From The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 1989

Official Opening Event 6-8pm, Friday 30 June 2023
Exhibition runs 1-16 July 2023

Artist: Mohammed ‘Ayo Busari’ & TAB Family

TAB Family: This is Family honours and celebrates the themes of Dreams, Freedom, Healing & Identity. It also focuses on bringing diverse cultural and art communities together to share knowledge & memories, learn history & traditions and create beautiful moments & experiences. The artists featured in the exhibition share a similar passion for ‘Love’ when asked what the themes meant to them.

Official Opening Event 6-8pm, Friday 21 July 2023
Exhibition runs 22 July – 6 August 2023

Creative Connections is an eclectic exhibition of artwork produced by artists with complex needs. Each artwork is accompanied by poetry freshly penned by local poets, which reflects the personality of the artist and provides an interpretation of the visual image, lending a voice to the often-non-verbal artist. The rawness and honesty in the use of colour and technique by the artists brings with it a freshness that creates candid interpretations that are inspirational and intriguing. All artwork is for sale with the majority of the proceeds returned to the artist.

Official Opening Event 6-8pm, Friday 25 August 2023
Exhibition runs 26 August – 10 September 2023

QUEER SHOW is presenting a group of interstate queer and gender queer artists. This exhibition intends to challenge patriarchal influences in the art industry by representing emerging and established artists who are gay, queer, disabled and gender diverse. This show will be an eclectic mix of media including, but not limited to, painting, installation, writing and performance. The selected artists are exploring themes of queer bodies, sexuality, nature and the politics of representation in fine art spaces. Together these works speak to queer audiences and allies, as a celebration of seeing creative institutions through a queer lens.

Image Credit: Rat Bedlington, 2022, The Black And Stupefying Sea, oil and fringing on canvas with polyester filling

Official Opening Event 6-8pm, Friday 13 October 2023
Exhibition runs 14 October – 29 October 2023

Artist: Fiona Gavino

Breaking Ground Making Ground, showcases 25 years of exploration into using basketry materials and techniques to create sculpture, installation, video and printmaking. The exhibition is a survey of intercultural artist Fiona Gavino’s practice that sees her working the traditional into the contemporary as she seeks to push the boundaries of what basketry can physically do or say.

Featured in the exhibition will be some of the artist’s early sculptural works with her signature bifurcated surfaces that offer a sense of fluidity and movement in the static. A 12 metre (entirely) hand woven suspended installation, an interactive artwork, works on paper and a body of video works made during the artist’s time with the Pixels+Fibre Project.

Image Credit: Lighthouse (Self Portrait), 2015 with the Pixels+Fibre Project (Myrto Angelouli). Phoography by Elliot Welsford