Melting Worlds

As the summer rain pours down and the flood waters rise, we are once again reminded of the impact humans have had on our earth. Take a moment to consider this, walk into the gallery and immerse yourself in wild, bright colours and arresting forms. Welcome to Melting Worlds.

Melting Worlds presents a collection of new works by Judy Darragh, Andrea du Chatenier, Karl Maughan and John Reynolds. Together they present a layered exploration of environmental issues, ranging from consumer waste and material fragility to the manipulation, memory and emotional experience of the natural world.

Judy Darragh transforms found, recycled and everyday objects into sculptural installations that highlight how plastic saturates our world. A consequence of mass production, the discarded items are repurposed to explore ideas around consumption and sustainability. These objects are reconsidered through Darragh’s critical and inquisitive processes, completely changing the way we interpret and engage with them. Her works take these everyday plastic objects out of their original context, injecting them with new meaning and significance.

Andrea Duchatenier’s hand built ceramics suggest the fragility and balance of nature- ideas that resonate with environmental vulnerability. Her ceramics lean towards camp theatricality where humour, glamour and failure coexist. These works continue her love of surfaces and the relationship between the rigid structure of ceramic form and the shifting amorphous nature of glaze. The forms suggest inflexible structures, while their surfaces quietly undermine it - colour slips, edges dissolve, glass melts and gravity leaves its mark. In the kiln, glaze and glass behave more like weather than design.

Karl Maughan and John Reynolds have collaborated to create a body of bright, immersive, and environmentally charged paintings. We are surrounded by a garden of lush abandon and deliquescence where paint drips and colour pops. Our relationship with the environment is both love-driven and destructive and this is explored beautifully in these works. Together they have created a visual dialogue that uses intense colour and painterly language to explore humanity’s emotional, aesthetic, and increasingly unstable relationship with the environment.