Creative worlds encourage reflection

ARTISTS can push and break barriers, challenging people to think about their beliefs and attitudes towards the inner, social and natural landscapes of their lives.

With new exhibition, Between Worlds, Backspace Gallery is exploring those ideas through the work of three very different female artists.

Alison Desmond, Max Sharam and Elizabeth Winter are encouraging viewers to unpack what they see and why.

Always a drawer since she was a child, Desmond’s favourite piece of hers on show is A pristine disco billabong, which incorporate photos, drawings and tiling.

This is one of many works she’s created in the last three years, having overcome cancer treatment.

“When I was having chemo, I couldn’t make much art, but then when I finished chemo and my body started to regenerate, so did my creativity,” Desmond said.

“This is the culmination of three years of really busy drawing. They’re intuitive, automatic drawings like the surrealists did, so not drawing from life, but the psyche, and seeing what kind of images come through.”

A singer-songwriter and interdisciplinary artists, Sharam presents “hybrid” art of “digitally manipulated” media, inspired by her passions for performance, documentary and technology.

As a professional painter and drawer, and book illustrator, Winter captures close, detailed, emotive snapshots of a larger scene, showing “the micro rather than the macro.”

Desmond said she feels really honoured to have been chosen to exhibit alongside Sharam and Winter.

“People will get to see three completely different female artists in one visit,” she said.

“We’re all doing our own thing and the show looks great in the new layout of Backspace, which works really well.”

Between Worlds will show daily from 10am to 5pm until Sunday, 10 November. Some works are for sale and entry is via the Art Gallery of Ballarat’s main entrance.