Opening Night October 1, running until October 29

unnatural, naturally – Lauren Simeoni and Melinda Young
With a delight in finding expressions of the ‘natural’ in the ‘unnatural’ (and vice versa), Simeoni and Young exploit the potential of found objects in their work, playing with colour and materiality. The conceptual ideas for this exhibition have been developed using a shared sketchbook, which migrates back and forth between their studios. The exhibition features work with a focus on botany and the body – re-presenting and re-configuring natural forms via artificial conduits. Creating, utilising and manipulating non-specific artificial objects: changing the unnatural to the natural, the artists have developed playful bodies of new work which speak to each other through an excited engagement of ideas and material sensibility.

Lauren Simeoni (Adelaide) and Melinda Young (Sydney) create work that is a homage to the senses – a wearable passport to a whimsical ‘other’ reality. Exploring the potential for unexpected narrative, their works often have a sly subversive humour. Finding the beautiful and seductive in what is otherwise thought of as mundane, toying with mass-production processes and reconfiguring mass-produced objects to create wearables of seductive beauty. Simeoni has a Bachelor of Arts (Gold and Silversmithing) from Canberra School of Art and undertook a Design Associateship at the JamFactory in Adelaide. Young has a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts. Both artists exhibit widely in Australia and overseas.