Contemporary Tasmanian Women Artists: Exploring Place, Process and Poetic Connection

Despard Gallery, 2 – 26 April 2025

By Devon Campbell April 2025

 

Image credit: Jo Chew, Dopamine, 2025, oil on canvas, 82 x 61 cm. Courtesy of Despard Gallery.

 

Now in its second iteration, Contemporary Tasmanian Women Artists at Despard Gallery continues to gain momentum and significance. Curated by Natasha Bradley Cross, this compelling group exhibition brings together six early-career and emerging women artists whose distinct practices converge around the central question: how do we define our sense of place? Through painting, sculpture, printmaking, assemblage, ceramics, and jewellery, the exhibition becomes a dialogue between self and surroundings, between emotion and environment.

Artists Jo Chew, Samantha Dennis, Ileigh Hellier, Rosanagh May, Cassie Sullivan, and Sophie Witter offer richly layered interpretations of both public and private experiences of place. Whether drawing inspiration from Tasmania’s waterways and wildlife or from the intimate rhythms of memory and loss, each artist presents work that is both grounded and searching.

Image credit: Cassie Sullivan, Moon Tide II, 2025, Paper, ink, perspex, 46 x 30 cm [unique state monotype]. [Photo: Rosie Hastie]. Courtesy of Despard Gallery.

 

For Cassie Sullivan, whose series of monotype prints forms part of her Moon Tide body of work, the experience of being with water serves as a portal for introspection. “The opportunity to spend time with the water is always nourishing,” she reflects. “Developing the monotype prints offered a deep introspection on how we all move in the world and the generally unseen push and pull that is ever present.” Her works echo tidal rhythms and emotional undercurrents, expressing the quiet yet powerful forces that shape our lives.

Image credit: Ileigh Hellier, Somewhere New, 2025, oil on linen, 92 x 102 cm. Courtesy of Despard Gallery.

Painter and sculptor Ileigh Hellier presents works that take bold steps toward abstraction. Embracing spontaneity, she explores gesture and form with a sense of freedom. “I've also been exploring assemblage,” she explains. “Arranging discarded objects together into flower-like motifs… they act as props for my paintings, subtly conversing about new beginnings, growth and the cyclical nature of things.” Her materials reflect reinvention, transformation, and care, creating a poetic recycling of the overlooked.

Image credit: Rosanagh May, Keep On Truckin' I,2024, white mid-fire clay, black underglaze and glaze, 22 x 47.5 cm. Courtesy of Despard Gallery.

Rosanagh May’s intricately detailed works serve as a visual homage to the songwriting of Claire Anne Taylor. Integrating lyrics from Taylor’s album ‘Giving It Away’, May interweaves text with thousands of tiny dots and bundled rope. Each piece becomes an emotional map of longing and resilience. “The heartache, the longing, the sheer determination; it's all there, in every line,” she says. Her work is a tribute to vulnerability and the intangible language of ‘feeling’ that binds people together.

 

Image credit: Samantha Dennis, Eel (Wet Specimen), 2024, freshwater pearls, glass pearls, nylon thread, found objects, dimensions variable. [Photo: Melanie De Ruyter of Melanie Kate Creative]. Courtesy of Despard Gallery.

 

Samantha Dennis brings a sculptural and conceptual edge to the exhibition. Through her finely crafted works, she investigates how animals are perceived depending on context. “The works contemplate how context affects the perception of an animal,” she explains. “How in the home we might fear the same creature we are so drawn to in the specimen cabinet.” Her practice underscores the tension between fascination, fear, beauty, and otherness.

Image credit: Jo Chew, Nowhere Fast, 2025, oil on linen, 102 x 102 cm. Courtesy of Despard Gallery

 

Jo Chew’s paintings balance vibrant colour with painterly restraint. “Contrasting bright colour, painterly gesture and seemingly preliminary line work or unfinished areas, my work evokes a sense of subtle instability,” she says. Her surfaces carry emotional nuance. Moments of vulnerability collide with hope, and quiet sorrow gives way to brightness.

Image credit: Sophie Witter, I Wondered Would I Get Time To Myself Ever Again, 2025, acrylic on canvas, 107 x 107 cm [framed]. Courtesy of Despard Gallery.

 

For Sophie Witter, the interplay between internal landscapes and external views serves as a source of comfort and orientation. “Some of the works include landscape views and impressions,” she notes. “Creating a slippage between our inside and outside worlds… a vase of wattle or looking at the water when we are dealing with the messy complexity of our lives.” Her works reaffirm the emotional grounding we find in nature and in beauty.

Image credit: Samantha Dennis, Lost Potential Series (Sculptural Necklace & Ring), 2024, slip-cast porcelain, ceramic stains, sterling silver, gold pigment, epoxy resin and silk cord, dimensions variable. [Photo: Melanie De Ruyter of Melanie Kate Creative]. Courtesy of Despard Gallery.

 

Curator Natasha Bradley Cross sees this exhibition as a vital platform to amplify diverse female voices from Lutruwita/Tasmania. “These artists share a strong social conscience and sense of responsibility for the people, places and natural world they source from and the worlds they inhabit”.

“It is a generous presentation of work… an exploration of place and how our relationships to our environment are built through personal experience and define our sense of place.
Natasha Bradley Cross

Contemporary Tasmanian Women Artists offers a collective meditation. Through diverse approaches and deeply personal processes, the artists provide insight into what it means to belong, care, observe, and create in this time and place.