EXHIBITION OPENINGS: Mira Oosterweghel; Lidia Byrne & Stacey Collee; Emma Shepherd – Trocadero Projects

Join us from 6pm to 8pm on Wednesday 21 August to celebrate the opening of Interview with a Clown Cowboy by Mira Oosterweghel; Disarray (Variations) by Lidia Byrne & Stacey Collee; and High Contrast by Emma Shepherd.

Event Information

• Parking is available in central Footscray and the Little Saigon Plaza Car Park.
• Trocadero Projects is a 2 minute walk away from Footscray Train Station, and a 1 minute walk away from Stop #63 on the 82 tram line.
• Wheelchair accessible and gender-neutral toilet facilities available.

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INTERVIEW WITH A CLOWN COWBOY 
Mira Oosterweghel

An artist interviews a clown, about life as a clown. They discuss themes of cowboys, gender, queerness, archetypes and colonial mythology.

Mira Oosterweghel is an artist living and working on the stolen lands of the people of the Kulin Nations. They recently completed an artist residency at Performing Arts Forum (PAF), St. Erme, France. Selected exhibitions include: Figuring ground at Grafton Regional Gallery, Unison (curated by Sebastian Henry-Jones), West Space, 2023; Teeth hide, KINGS ARI, 2023; Soiled feet rammed dirt, Incinerator Gallery, 2022; Bone with a Hole, BLINDSIDE ARI, 2021.

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DISARRAY (VARIATIONS) 
Lidia Byrne & Stacey Collee

Disarray (Variations) is a series of paintings that have emerged from the long standing collaborative practice of Lidia Byrne & Stacey Collee. While oil painting has historically been a solitary practice, the duo are interested in the canvas as a site of negotiation and competing marks. Ultimately the works are unified through their investigation into modernist aesthetics, gestural forms and colour.

Lidia Byrne is a Melbourne based artist whose practice is informed by a commitment to painting. Through her work she explores questions around representation and abstraction. Byrne graduated from VCA in 2022.

Stacey Collee is a performer and painter whose work reaches toward the raw emotive force of love and desire. Since graduating from VCA in 2022, Collee has exhibited at various galleries such as KINGS ARI, West Space, George Paton Gallery, Seventh Gallery, BLINDSIDE ARI and the Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery.

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HIGH CONTRAST
Emma Shepherd

High Contrast explores the interplay of vastly different materials, and how they have been linked throughout history. The works look at the contrast between the softness and tactility of cloth, and how it can be given form through the integration these different materials.

Flinders-based weaver Emma Shepherd practices one of the world's oldest crafts with a sensibility embedded in her environment. Using yarns collected from all over the world, she reflects on the deeper history of fibre(s); the role of weaving in human history and it's legacy as our earliest algorithms in action. Shepherd's work incorporates materials like pine needles, horsehair and bark taken from her immediate surrounds, letting them shape the work in a gentle yet deliberate way.

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Banner Image: Lidia Byrne and Stacey Collee, Devotion, 2024, oil on canvas, 77 x 101cm.

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Trocadero Projects is supported by the City of Maribyrnong.

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Acknowledgement of Country 

Trocadero operates on the traditional lands of the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We offer our respects to Elders past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.