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In this episode of Artwank, we visit Bundanon to discuss the current exhibition, 'The Hidden Line The Art of the Boyd Women', with curator Sophie O’Brien. The exhibition brings attention to the women of the Boyd family (Arthur Boyd was a celebrated Australian artist, leaving his home, the Bundanon estate, to support the arts) and their role in Australian art and cultural life. While the Boyd name is often associated with male artists, this show focuses on the work, lives and influence of the women who shaped the legacy in ways that have often been overlooked.

Sophie O’Brien joins us to talk through the curatorial process behind the exhibition. She reflects on how the project developed, how works and archival materials were selected, and the challenges of representing multiple generations of women across different creative practices. The conversation explores what it means to reframe established art histories and how institutions like Bundanon can open space for stories that have not always been centred.

Sophie O’Brien is a curator at Bundanon where she works across exhibitions, collections and research. She has held roles at major public institutions and has worked on a wide range of projects spanning historical and contemporary art. Her practice is grounded in close engagement with artists, archives and place, with a focus on bringing new perspectives to existing collections.

This episode looks at the labour of curating, the gaps that still exist in art history and how exhibitions like The Boyd Women can shift public understanding of legacy, authorship and recognition. It is a conversation about process, responsibility and the ongoing work of making space for women within cultural narratives.

Thanks for chatting to us Sophie

Recorded November 2025

Exhibition on until 15th February 2026

'The Hidden Line: Art of the Boyd Women repositions the creative practices of five generations of women from one of Australia’s most prominent artistic dynasties. Showcasing more than 300 powerful and diverse works, this timely exhibition brings into focus the women of the Boyd family – artists, designers, writers, and creative collaborators – whose contributions have long been influential yet overshadowed by their celebrated male counterparts.
Revealing a remarkable matrilineal line of artistic practices, the exhibition will present works by Emma Minnie a’Beckett Boyd, Lady Mary Nolan, Yvonne Boyd, Lucy Boyd Beck, Hermia Boyd and their descendents still practicing today including Lucy Boyd, Polly Boyd, Florence Boyd Williams and Ellen Boyd Green. Drawn largely from the Bundanon Collection, with key loans from the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Library, and Heide Museum of Modern Art, the exhibi

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Today we’re bringing you a special bonus episode of Art Wank to celebrate the graduation exhibition of our very own co-host, Fiona Verity. Fiona has been knee-deep in her studies, working tirelessly to create an incredible body of work, and you can see it on display tonight at the National Art School BFA Graduation Exhibition — Thursday, 4 December from 6pm. Get yourself down there and take in everything that’s on show. 

Julie spoke to Fiona about the development of her drawing practice over her three years at NAS, how it has steadied her, focused her work, and made it quieter. Fiona talks about how much she used the NAS library, especially the drawing section, where she believes she may have borrowed more books than any other student! She also reflects on the importance of peer support and peer learning at the National Art School, and how it shapes and extends your work. Fiona has dedicated her degree show to her stepmother, who passed away earlier this year. Her grief has been worked through print, stitch, paint, and drawing based on her stepmother’s garden.

Fiona was also chosen as a finalist in the Kedumba drawing Award 2025!

We are very proud of you Fiona, cant wait to see what you do next!  

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Zoe Young is an Australian painter whose work spans still life, portraiture and abstraction. She studied at the National Art School in Sydney and earned her BFA in 2012. 

Zoe currently has a show on at Sophie Gannon Gallery in Melbourne until 13th Dec 2025.

In our conversation with Zoe, she spoke openly about the unusual path she took into the art world and how that path shaped the way she works today. She described leaving the National Art School twice, once as a young student who felt unready for the demands of formal training and again when life pulled her toward the buzz of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. 

Young grew up between Sydney, rural New South Wales and alpine-region settings, spending part of her childhood in a ski lodge on the edge of the Kosciuszko National Park. 

In her paintings Young often applies sculptural thinking (she studied sculpture at NAS), she sees canvas as form, composing her subjects with an awareness of planes, space, and structural balance. Her still lifes might show commonplace items, her portraits draw out character and story, and her abstractions explore shape, light, and composition.

Her work has earned recognition: she won the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 2018 for a portrait titled Drawing Storyboards (of film director Bruce Beresford), chosen from hundreds of entries across the nation. More broadly she has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout Australia and had a solo exhibition titled “STILL.LIFE.” in Los Angeles. 

Zoe is represented by Sophie Gannon Gallery in Melbourne and Phillip Bacon in Brisbane. 

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We interviewed Harrie Fasher, sculptor and artist, at her large studio in Portland NSW in November 2025. She is a permanent artist in residence at The Foundations in Portland and has built a bronze foundry and sculpture studio over many years. She has a deep interest in animals, especially horses, and her work shows a strong understanding of their bodies and movement.

Harrie spoke about her daily practice and the way she shapes each piece through drawing and metal work. Her studio holds many works in progress and shows the many stages of her process, from first sketches to full metal forms.

Her role at The Foundations supports the growth of the arts site and also gives her space to pursue long term projects. The foundry allows her to cast works on site and gives her full control of each stage. She works with a small team and often teaches others about casting and metal work.

Harrie described her bond with horses as central to her thinking. Her works show the frame and gesture of the animal and invite viewers to see how bodies move through space.

Thanks Harrie, it was wonderful meeting you and seeing your work in the studio.

Harrie is represented by King Street Gallery in Sydney and Australian Galleries in Melbourne.

29 November 2025 – 22 February 2026 

Orange Regional Gallery
'Harrie Fasher: Before Dawn is a major solo exhibition featuring monumental bronze and concrete sculptures. This exhibition represents a pivotal moment in Fasher’s career, consolidating a decade of artistic and technical research at an ambitious scale. ‘Before Dawn’ explores resilience and transformation through material contrasts – weight against fragility, rawness against refinement.

Harrie Fasher is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.'

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This week Art Wank met Rhonda Davis, Curator of Macquarie University Gallery, and Kon Gouriotis, curator and editor of Artist Profile magazine. They recently curated an exhibition at Macquarie Gallery titled Australian Abstraction. We spoke with them about their thinking behind the exhibition, how they chose the artists involved, and the Macqaurie university Art Collection. 

'The Australian Abstraction exhibition series continues its exploration of the evolving nature of abstraction within the Australian context. This second stage retraces the diversity, episodic developments, and layered narratives that have shaped abstraction as an enduring force in Australian art.

What began as an international movement has been reconfigured and transformed by artists working within the unique socio-political, cultural, and environmental conditions of this country.

Sophie Cape, Julia Davis & Lisa Jones in collaboration, Helen Eager, Louise Forthun, Dale Frank, Michael Goss, Gary Gregg, Sean Hogan, Michael Johnson, Kirtika Kain, Donald Laycock, Ian Milliss, Kyle Murrell, NOT, Louise Olsen, Ana Pollak, Jeannette Siebols, Aida Tomescu, Savanhdary Vongpoothorn and Chris Wise

Curated by Rhonda Davis and Kon Gouriotis'

About the collection at Macquarie University - 

'Our collection adorns the entire campus with artwork on display in the library, the faculties, the hospital, the clinics, and the administration buildings, where staff, students and visitors collectively encounter art as part of the everyday life of Macquarie’s expansive campus.

The paintings and sculptures add robust vitality, freshness and bursts of colour to the physical environment of the campus − its visual presence is certainly much felt, discussed and enjoyed.'

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In this episode, we chat with the extraordinary Aida Tomescu, one of Australia’s most respected abstract painters. Born in Romania and based in Sydney, Aida has spent her career exploring the emotional and structural possibilities of paint, building a language that’s as physical as it is poetic.

We talk about her process: the scraping, layering, and reworking that give her paintings their dense, luminous surfaces. She describes painting as a living conversation, one that demands patience, trust, and deep attention.

A major theme in our discussion is the importance of form and the relationships between all the elements within a painting. For Aida, nothing sits in isolation; every shape, colour, and mark holds a relationship to the next. It’s this internal rhythm, this careful balancing of tensions, that gives her work its remarkable sense of harmony and presence. 

We also spoke with Aida about her teaching career, she taught at National Art School for twenty years, and several of our previous guests have told us what an amazing teacher she was. 

This conversation is a deep dive into the craft and philosophy of painting — into what it means to spend a lifetime painting. 

Thanks so much Aida, we loved talking to you. 

Aida's show opens at Fox Jensen Gallery on 15th November 2025. 

Aida is represented by Fox Jensen Gallery in Australia , Fox Jensen McCrory in NZ, and Flowers Gallery London and Hong Kong.  

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Aaron Aryadharma Matheson is an artist living and working at Lennox St Studios, Sydney. He’s been a finalist in the Mosman, Waverley and Waterhouse prizes, and picked up the Richard Ford Travel Award along the way. He studied drawing at the Prince’s Drawing School in London, and later completed a Master of Fine Art at the National Art School in Sydney.

This podcast is about art, Buddhism, and living with a chronic illness,multiple sclerosis, and how all those things come together in everyday life. Aaron talks about painting as a way of making sense of things, of finding stillness and meaning through colour, mark and form.  

We had such a great chat with Aaron — thanks so much to him for taking the time. 

Aaron is represented by Liverpool St Gallery. 

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In this episode of Art Wank, we focus on Australian artists Michelle Cawthorn and Peter Sharp and their recent creative residency at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut, USA. Together, they reflect on how this experience produced a new body of work and the opportunity to explore the foundations archives. 

During her residency at the Albers Foundation, Cawthorn immersed herself in collage of birds and particularly focussed on the work of Anni Albers. Sharp engaged directly with the legacy of Josef Albers, exploring how colour, geometry and perception can reveal new ways of seeing the landscape by painting on Albers book on colour, reinterpreting the pages for himself. 

Michelle Cawthorn – Bio

Michelle Cawthorn is a Sydney-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in drawing and extends across collage, painting, sculpture and installation. Her work explores memory, identity and belonging through an autobiographical lens, often using repetition, pattern and sensory triggers to evoke fragments of experience.

Cawthorn holds undergraduate degrees in Fine Art and Art Education from the University of New South Wales, and completed a PhD in Fine Arts in 2021. She has held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in over sixty group shows across Australia. Her work is represented by OLSEN Gallery, Sydney.

Peter Sharp – Bio

Peter Sharp is an Australian artist whose practice has, for more than three decades, investigated how the natural world can be understood through abstraction. Working across drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpture, Sharp captures the structural and rhythmic essence of nature rather than its surface appearance.

He holds a Bachelor of Art Education from the City Art Institute (now UNSW Art & Design) and a Master of Fine Arts from UNSW. Sharp has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally.

Join us as Michele Cawthorn and Peter Sharp share insights from their transformative experience at the Albers Foundation. 

Apply for the residency here.

Thanks, Peter and Michele, for speaking with us, it was a fascinating insight into your time at the Albers Foundation, and we’re really looking forward to seeing the work that emerges from the experience. 

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In this episode we explore the work and world of Australian artist John R Walker, a painter who invites us to experience the land as a living and layered presence rather than just a view. Born in Sydney in 1957 and now based in Braidwood, New South Wales, Walker’s journey has taken him from city life to a deep engagement with rural environments. His art connects ecology, geology, and memory, revealing what he calls “the experience of being in country.”

Walker is known for his large and immersive paintings that map the rhythms and histories of the Australian landscape. His brushwork traces erosion, fire, and growth, capturing both the slow movement of geological time and the immediate sensations of walking through a place. In his Fireground series he responded to the devastation and regeneration of bushfires, showing both the destruction and renewal that shape the land.

Over more than thirty years, Walker has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas. His paintings are held in major collections including the National Gallery of Australia. His exhibition Journeys and Return at the Orange Regional Gallery in 2023 and 2024 confirmed his reputation as one of the leading painters of country in Australia.

In our conversation we discuss how Walker balances materials and philosophy, how walking shapes his art, and why he believes landscape painting today must also tell ecological stories.

John is represented by Utopia Art in Sydney 

Thanks John

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In this episode we speak with Michael Cusack, an accomplished abstract painter, educator, and co-founder of the Byron School of Art in Mullumbimby. Michael’s career has spanned over three decades, with his paintings exhibited widely across Australia and internationally. His work is represented in major public and private collections, and he is known for his richly layered abstractions that explore colour, form, and the tension between control and chance.

Michael began teaching at TAFE NSW, where he developed a strong connection to art education and mentoring younger artists. 

In 2013, alongside fellow artists Emma Walker, James Guppy and Christine Willcocks, Michael co-founded the Byron School of Art. Based in Mullumbimby, the school has grown into a respected independent art institution in the Northern Rivers, offering a range of programs, exhibitions, and a strong sense of creative community outside of the metropolitan art centres.

We talk about Michael’s journey from Ireland to Australia, his ongoing fascination with abstraction, and the role of teaching and community-building in sustaining a meaningful artistic practice.

Michael is represented in sydney by Olsen Gallery.