Join us at Eloise Cato Gallery on Saturday 22 August at 2pm for a conversation with Lorenzo Montesini and gallery artists Sophie Clague, Kathrin Longhurst and Sophie Victoria to discuss the romanticism of Egypt from afar, and how inherited narratives continue to shape the gaze. Drawing on Lorenzo’s lived connection to Egypt, alongside the artists’ recent encounters, the conversation will explore the politics of looking- the ways memory shapes our image of a place, and the distance between the Egypt we inherit through stories and images, and the Egypt we encounter through lived experience. The conversation will also consider the distinction between making and taking—between responding to a place through artistic practice and the longer history of cultural extraction and plunder. Together, they will ask what it might mean to encounter, make and exchange without turning another culture into something to be possessed.

Lorenzo Montesini was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, in a Franco-Italian family with deep roots in the city. He moved to Australia in the late 1950s following the Suez crisis, later serving in Vietnam and establishing a life in Melbourne and Sydney. A writer and longstanding cultural advocate, Lorenzo has devoted much of his life to strengthening connections between Australia and Egypt, most notably through his work as Chairman of the Australian Friends of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. He is the author of the memoir My Life and Other Misdemeanours, which traces his remarkable journey between Egypt and Australia.

RSVP is essential, please book through Humanitix. For further information or to register your interest in the pricelist please get in touch directly at info@catogallery.com or by calling +61 403 902 498. The exhibition will be on show till the 22 August 2026 during gallery hours of 10:30 - 5pm Tuesday - Friday and 10:30 - 3pm Saturday or by appointment.

For centuries, Egypt has occupied a privileged position within the Western imagination—as destination, archive, symbol and spectacle. It has inspired artists, archaeologists, travellers and empire alike. Yet the same fascination has often been accompanied by extraction: the removal of objects, the appropriation of knowledge and the transformation of living culture into consumable image. Pilgrimage begins by acknowledging this inheritance. It asks whether contemporary artists can occupy another position—that of the guest rather than the collector, the witness rather than the interpreter. What responsibilities accompany the act of looking when one enters a culture that has already given so much to the world? Earlier this year, artists Sophie Clague, Kathrin Longhurst, Linda Sok and Sophie Victoria were invited to travel to Egypt together. The mythology of the artist in residence has long promised creative revelation beyond the rhythms of everyday practice: a temporary displacement from the familiar studio, where the carefully arranged rituals of making are exchanged for the possibility of renewed vision. It is an enduring romantic construct, suggesting that inspiration resides elsewhere, waiting to be discovered. Yet such narratives are neither universal nor sustainably ethical. Travel does not inherently produce knowledge. Rather, it establishes the conditions for encounter, where understanding is contingent upon attention, reciprocity and a willingness to remain unsettled by the limits of one's own perspective.

As such these works made in reflection do not attempt to explain Egypt. Nor do they seek to translate its cultural complexity into an Australian visual language. They are records of encounter: responses to atmosphere, conversation, landscape, architecture and the quiet moments in which historical distance gives way to lived experience. Their subject is not Egypt itself, but the ethical condition of standing before it. Cultural exchange is most meaningful when it resists possession. To receive hospitality is to incur responsibility. To be welcomed into another culture is not simply to observe it, but to consider how one might respond with equal generosity. Such reciprocity cannot be measured through representation alone; it resides in the quality of attention, in sustained relationships, and in the recognition that some forms of knowledge remain rooted in place, belonging in lived continuity.

Install of Sophie Victoria, 'Palimpsest Series', 2026, and Sophie Clague's sculpture 'Find me in the loop', 2026. Image courtesy of Sophie Victoria, Sophie Clague & Eloise Cato Gallery.

Contact the host of Artist Talk: Pilgrimage- Sophie Clague, Kathrin Longhurst & Sophie Victoria with guest speaker Lorenzo Montesini

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