OPENING NIGHT I SATURDAY 23rd OF MAY, 5PM-7PM
VIEWING DATES I 23rd OF MAY UNTIL THE 3rd OF JUNE 2026
THE EXHIBITION
A remnant evokes something past or lost but also presents a new opportunity. Works in this exhibition have largely been created from the artists’ discarded or unresolved paintings. They have challenged each other to make use of their abandoned works - not only materially but as a creative resource.
There is a psychology in this act of revisiting and carrying forward that resonates with the artists’ approaches to painting the Australian landscape. Both are interested in how our experiences of the natural environment form us, become our points of navigation and the places we return to, at least in our psyche.
In creating these new bodies of work from old, the painting process has bridged past and present, providing a means of confronting loss, holding memory and seeking resolution. Through passages of reworked paint and scraped-back surfaces, among traces of surviving marks and veils of ghosted colour, the artists have each found their own language of remembrance and renewal.
THE ARTISTS
DAN NELSON is a Newcastle/Muloobinba based artist whose paintings connect to the Australian landscape through light, colour and a deep sense of time. Growing up at the edge of a patch of thick rainforest and spending time on rural land backing onto bush have been strong influences on her body of work for this exhibition.
Fragmented landscapes and remnant vegetation emerge as symbols of brokenness and hope. A lone cabbage palm standing beside a farmhouse is a reminder of the forest that once grew, possibly for millennia, on that country.
Dan has had five solo exhibitions and has participated in curated group exhibitions at the Museum of Art and Culture, yapang in Lake Macquarie, University of Newcastle Galleries, The Lock Up, Straitjacket, Newcastle Art Space Gallery, The Creator Incubator, and Project Gallery 90 in Sydney. In 2024 she was highly commended in the Milburn Landscape Art Prize and has since been a finalist in the Muswellbrook Art Prize, 9×5 Landscape Art Prize and the LEDA Art Prize.
Her work is represented in the University of Newcastle Collection and in many private collections.
CAROLINE TRAILL was born and raised on Kamilaroi country – The Liverpool Plains in North Western NSW, and the landscapes of that region remain an enduring source of inspiration at the heart of her practice. The variable climatic conditions of drought and flood and their effects on bushland and vegetation have shaped a rich visual and conceptual language that continues to evolve throughout her work.
Now based in Muloobinba – Newcastle, Caroline finds a compelling contrast in the coastal landscape, it’s shifting light and shoreline rhythms offering a new dialogue with the inland country that first informed her practice. Alongside the connection to place, music has long held a powerful presence in Caroline’s life and art, its repetition, pattern, rhythm and emotional depth finding natural parallels in the way she creates her work.
Caroline holds a Diploma of Fine Art from TAFE Illawarra Institute, Moss Vale Campus, graduating with the Chroma Art Prize for excellence. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows in the Southern Highlands, in The Small Space at Goulburn Regional Gallery as well as numerous group exhibitions both in the Southern Highlands and Newcastle including curated exhibitions at The Creator Incubator and Newcastle Artspace. Caroline has also been recognised as a finalist in several prestigious art prizes, including The John Villiers Outback Prize and The Newcastle Club Foundation Prize.