Exhibition Opening + Artist Talks | Beautiful Tensions

Image credit | Lisa Furno, motion blur, 2024, digital print, exhibition matte paper 230gsm, post bags donated from friends, my worn out boody tracksuit pants, wax cord, pre loved jumpsuit from emma for christmas, 420 x 290.7 mm | Photo by Anna Green

Please join us for the opening of the exhibition Beautiful Tensions | Gray St Workshop celebrates forty years.

EXHIBITION OPENING: 6PM THURSDAY 9 OCTOBER 2025

ARTIST TALKS: 5.30PM THURSDAY 9 OCTOBER 2025

In celebration of Gray Street Workshop’s 40th anniversary, JamFactory presents Beautiful Tensions, a major touring exhibition honouring the momentous legacy and talent of the workshop by showcasing new work by the four current partners: Jess Dare, Lisa Furno, Sue Lorraine and Catherine Truman.

Beautiful Tensions: Gray Street Workshop celebrates forty years is showing at Craft + Design Canberra from Thursday 9 October to Saturday 15 November.

Established in 1985 by Anne Brennan, Catherine Truman and Sue Lorraine, Gray Street Workshop is one of Australia’s longest running collectively run studios for artists working in the field of contemporary jewellery and object making. The uncompromising commitment of this group of artists to their work and to studio-based practice has enabled Gray Street Workshop to evolve into one of Australia’s most exciting and respected workshops.

Over the past 40 years, Gray Street Workshop has been an influential force within the visual arts in South Australia. As an access workshop, Gray Street has contributed to the professional and creative development of over 100 jewellers from around Australia and oversees, many of whom have gone on to have significant careers of their own. The breadth of Gray Street Workshop’s alumni is testament to the wide-ranging appeal, significance and relevance that the workshop has within both the jewellery community and the broader Australian craft and design sector.

The workshop’s partners, past and present, have helped shape the cultural life of South Australia through their active roles as educators, mentors and successful studio-based artists, providing an example and a model for other artists and makers. This thought-provoking exhibition highlights the continued significance of the workshop and demonstrates the successes that can be garnered in a collaborative approach to creative practice.

Beautiful Tensions is the culmination of two years of work and research by Gray Street Workshop’s four current partners: Jess Dare, Lisa Furno, Sue Lorraine and Catherine Truman. Witty, playful and poignant in equal measure, each body of work is distinctive, yet share certain themes and formal concerns. Catherine Truman’s interest in human interactions with the natural world finds expression in a series of wild twig creatures which she places in unsettling tableaux that reflect her deep concern about the impact of climate change on the land and landscape. Lisa Furno is also driven by environmental concerns, responding to the impact of consumption and the waste it generates through creating masks made of the domestic detritus generated by her family and friends, which she then documents in a series of photographic performances. Jess Dare’s wreaths and floral tributes meticulously crafted from metal, glass and porcelain explore the iconography of mourning and commemoration. These themes are explored in a more private way by Sue Lorraine, whose masks and objects made of recycled mulga souvenirs respond to a painting by her late father and constitute a meditation on the making of family memories. 

This timely exhibition articulates the group’s shared commitment to the value of making and the power of objects to transmit meaning. The way their shared themes are articulated so differently in the exhibition is a cogent expression of how the group works, in their own words, ‘separately together’.

The exhibition was launched at JamFactory Adelaide, and will be touring to 12 venues nationally across SA, ACT, VIC, TAS, NSW and QLD. 

The exhibition is accompanied by Beautiful Tensions, a 152-page hard-cover monograph co-published by JamFactory and Wakefield Press. The publication is written by author Anne Brennan, who was also a co-founder of Gray Street Workshop.

Beautiful Tensions: Gray Street Workshop celebrates forty years is a JamFactory touring exhibition supported by the Visions of Australia touring program, an Australian Government program aiming to improve access to cultural material for all Australians.