Image: Michaela McHugh
GALLERY TWO | MICHAELA MCHUGH
broken glass; soft grass
FRI 1 JUL 5.30PM- FRI 29 JUL 5.00PM
OPENING EVENT 1 JUL, 5.30-8.00PM
FREE TO ATTEND
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Monday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Tuesday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Wednesday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Thursday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Friday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Saturday 10.00am - 3.00pm
Sunday closed
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Platform Arts is wheelchair-accessible via our Gheringhap St entrance. Unlocked, accessible bathrooms are available on both ground and first floors.
For accessibility enquiries, please directly contact us at hello@platformarts.org.au
Please note, Platform Arts is a dry venue.
An exhibition about the ecosystems that surround us, curated by Michaela McHugh. Join us for opening night celebrations on Friday, 01 July and take part in a Collective Nature Mandala.
“Come gather on opening night, feel your place of connection here on Wadawurrung Country. You are invited to join in the co-creation of a nature mandala. The theme is ‘belonging to place,’ and connecting to what you love. You are invited to bring an item of nature from your place (a feather, a leaf, stone, seed pod, flower, shell) and add it to the mandala. Materials will also be provided. Throughout the night there will be opportunity for you to add your piece to the mandala and weave together a story of diversity and belonging.”
A riverbed of story; of mud, muck, cracks, rubbish, broken glass, soft grass, seed, blossom, life, reeds, shit, mushrooms, buzzing birds, bare feet and steel capped boots.
A collaboration of place, people and creatures that surround this eclectic pocket of land, unfolding the likeness we all share in our differentness.
A watershed of creatures, life makers, life dwellers and community. These who are the underground springs that ripple into the creek, flowing and bubbling downstream catching and sharing stories.
Listen if you wish, it's always been here.
Michaela McHugh is an eclectic multimedia artist who practices in the mediums of object making, installation, sculpture, land art, printmaking, weaving/textile/craft techniques, drawing, photography and wordsmithing.
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The following public programs will be running during the exhibition, with more to be announced:
Collective Nature Mandala – Belonging to Place, 01 July (during opening night in Gallery Two). Led by Rebecca Wray of Nature Circle.
Tree Planting (with Friends of Cowies Creek & Creek Connect) 03 July
Creektures with Michaela McHugh, 9 July
Transformational Writing Workshop, 16 July
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Michaela holds a BFA from Monash University, Caulfield, Victoria and is currently practicing art alongside applying Permaculture as a designer, grower and being. Investing in materials sourced from the waste stream and from nature, most of her work connects to topics related to landscape, earth and community connection.
"To describe my artistic practice is to describe my life, my way of being and interaction with ecology on this floating rock in a vast eclectic cosmos. I try not to seperate the concept of creation and making into a juxtaposition of living and being, but another reflection of catching and storing energy of the interactions that come through existing. To make is another application of language being spoken out like a wave crashing that's emitting a message from the bottom of the ocean, a weed popping up in a bare patch of earth indicating what is and is not active in the soil. It's an expression of being, dancing on the cool sand in bare feet, curating carrots with sage, thyme and cabbage in a copper pot with a wooden spoon. My creation involves playing in the soil, communing with the plants, collecting the things humans value to be waste, both in the natural and human formed world, responding to these changes and valuing the already existing essence of This and It and Was and Now and Am for this moment and the future.”
