Chelsea Lehmann: Artist Statement & Bio

Gesture Exhibition Statement

This series of paintings is concerned with the body as a constantly changing and evolving entity, both physically and socially. My curiosity lies in the intersection of personal experiences of intimacy and desire with the tumultuous realities of our contemporary world – shaped by pandemic, ecological concerns, and social inequalities. Through the application of diverse paint viscosities and layering techniques, I explore the transformation and suppression of physical forms within chaotic environments, suggesting a continuous negotiation between inner and outer pressures. As fluid and ephemeral postures unfold amidst this turbulence, echoes of historical art forms intermittently surface and dissolve, emphasising the mutability of bodily forms.

Chelsea Lehmann has exhibited extensively in Australia for the past two decades, and has been the recipient of several awards, grants, and local and international residencies. Her work is informed by baroque and surrealist approaches to representing the body in pictorial space, referencing the body’s fragmentation and changing definitions in the 21st century. She is a Lecturer in Drawing at the National Art School and completed a PhD at UNSW Art & Design in 2019.

Mel Young: Artist Statement & Bio

Melinda Young is a maker with a research-based practice spanning jewellery and intimately scaled textiles. Her practice explores place and materiality with an emphasis on working with gleaned or re-purposed materials; the resulting work reflects experiences of being in and understanding place, underpinned by the complexities of place-based making in contemporary Australia. She is particularly interested in materiality via the traces of human and non-human interactions left behind on the body and the land along with the and the potential narrative consequences of materials. 

Melinda has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally since 1997 individually, collaboratively and in group exhibitions. Recent exhibitions have included landlines/tracelines a solo exhibition at Australian Design Centre and Poetics of Place II, a group exhibition at ATTA Gallery Bangkok, which she also curated. Melinda has undertaken several artist residencies, and received awards for her work, which is held in significant public and private collections and included in numerous publications. 

Alongside her making practice, Melinda has spent the past 25 years working within the contemporary craft and design field as a tertiary and community educator, curator, gallery manager and writer. She has a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of the Arts and is undertaking a cross-disciplinary PhD in Human Geography and Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong. Melinda is a Lecturer in the School of Art & Design, Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture UNSW. She lives and makes on unceded Dharawal Country.

Tracey Jones: Artist Statement & Bio

Tracey Jones is a Sydney-based painter working in the realist tradition. Through the lens of affect theory, she considers the relationship between objects and meaning, using culturally familiar objects, often imbued with familial and personal significance, to explore themes of memory, belonging, and absence. Connection and memory are at the centre of her practice.

Creating compositions from her collected personal objects, Jones employs the historical genre of still-life painting to interpret her recollections, both real and imagined, into pictorial translations that make the intangible, tangible.

Jones’s choice of subject matter, composition and colour are  highly intentional. Her detailed, often closely cropped paintings sometimes straddle the threshold between realism and abstraction. Existing in the space between memory and reality, they create a tension between the visible and the non-visible.

Tracey Jones is a Sydney based painter working within the realist tradition.

She creates still life and figurative paintings often using prosaic, culturally familiar  objects to explore memory, connection and absence.

Tracey graduated from RMIT fine Arts Honours (first class) in 2023. In the same year she was the recipient of the RAD exhibition award, and a six-week residency through the RAD Artist Residency Award, both given by the Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery.

She has been a finalist in a number of art prizes including the 2024 Meroogal Art Prize and the 2024 Macquarie Emerging Art Prize.

Since graduating in 2023, Tracey has presented two solo shows and has featured in numerous group shows. Her recent exhibitions include ‘Prelude’ Group Show with Australian Galleries Melbourne, 2026, Aotearoa Art Fair, New Zealand 2026 and Sydney Contemporary 2025.