Join curator, Max Dingle OAM in conversation with artist, Grace Burzese and exhibition essay author Natalie McDonagh PhD. Stay on to enjoy refreshments with the panel participants after the discussion.

“I don’t believe art can ever be negative. It knows nothing of negation because it knows nothing of time. Before escaping the norm, it moves closer to life. It is not eccentric; it is at the heart of the centre. It is the act, the act-ness of the act, the exactness of the tao. Creation is in no way removed from anything or anything of life. It is life itself. It is the way itself.
I am going to see. I’m going to see what I don’t know. My lips will tremble. I shall suffer. Why not? “ The Roving Shadows Pascal Quignard 200

Grace Burzese works in the fields of painting, drawing and sculpture. Her process based art making is inspired by the exploration and play of colour, materials and form. Abstraction for Grace allows for an open identification with how one relates to being. In the questioning of self, feelings and perceptions are reduced to colour, mark and form - a language and sensibility which does not identify with known or understood imagery, but rather how something is sensed and embodied.

Max Dingle, artist, curator and writer who’s focus is painting, acrylic on canvas, and sculpture inspired by nature and our local landscape as well as themes within myths and stories. His expertise, from 25 years in major galleries and museums, is now used to curate exhititions in the Shoalhaven. Max was awarded an Order of Australia, OAM, in 2019 for services to arts and culture.

Natalie McDonagh Phd, artist, designer, writer, who activates and holds the space for others as they explore their inner world; bearing witness to what may emerge, what may become known; able to amplify the effects. Her art works are tools to aid different aspects of the mind - creative thinking, self-inquiry, spiritual practice. As well as making spaces that facilitate conditions in which far more than intellectual ways of knowing are awakened, and in which the mind may meet itself and unfurl.

Image: Grace Burzese, Piecing it together 1 (detail), 2013, acrylic on paper, 57.5 x 76 cm