Online exhibition
9 October - 29 November 2020
Dreaming in Black and White

Each artist in this exhibition presents a body of work with seperate but universal narratives about identity, our relationship to the environment and duality of being human. Black and white imagery serves as a direct yet powerful means to convey these ideas.

Symbolically, black and white has many different meanings across different cultures and societies but overall it creates balance which provides a path for peace and harmony. Dreaming in Black and White is a curated online exhibition that attempts to convey this viewpoint.

Exhibiting artists: Patricia Wilson-Adams, Vera Zulumovski, Kerri Smith, Caelli Jo Brooker

All works are for sale; price includes postage (insurance extra) within Australia. Please email ahn.wells@gmail.com for any enquiries.

“This group of small engravings is about snow, in fact old snow that was still lying everywhere in Aomori in early spring and to my surprise, what I expected to be pure white, was very layered carrying the history of the winter – melts, mud and fallen branches. The quality of the light and the silence took me back to childhood and the New England where sometimes in winter I would wake up to find the world transformed and silenced – the Silver world.   This is a poetic term used by Japanese writers to describe snow and winter landscapes. “

Patricia Wilson-Adams
September 2020

Patricia Wilson-Adams 
Silver world I - VIII (edition 10/10 signed PWA 07 or 05)
copper engraving on Rives BFK paper
8.8 x 11.8cm (image) 20 x 20cm (paper)
$210.00 each
inc postage and handling in Australia via Australia Post (insurance extra)

Vera Zulumovski’s work reflects her rethinking and exploration of her background, after growing up as the child of Macedonian migrants, with her daily experience of the Novocastrian suburban environment. Zulumovski says “by looking at the life of my ancestors, I am able to more clearly and confidently comprehend my identity, therefore my present and future.” 

“I draw as a form of meditation and observation every day. By using my home and garden as a place to sit, study and quietly contemplate. To enable freedom and allow time to pass without expectation is my motivation.

Over the 4 years I’ve been drawing as meditation I’ve noticed a change in my mindset. Initially I tried to complete a work in one sitting but by slowing the drawing process I found details emerged and a more considered drawing resulted. 

I have been using Instagram to document my progress, which although is completely at odds with the meditative process, has allowed me to share my experience and maybe motivate other artists.”

Kerri Smith
October 2020

Kerri Smith
Everyday drawings 1-10
felt-tip pen on Arches paper
29.7 x 21cm (A4)
$80.00 each
inc postage and handling in Australia via Australia Post (insurance extra)

These monochromatic works on paper continue an ongoing investigation of process, making and consumption, and represent a material narrative that considers our collective and creative place in the world. Through the use of re-purposed paper raffia and the idiosyncratic weaving of drawn and stitched marks, this series generates multiple linear compositions that also refer to the patterns, methods and traditions of fabric and textile design, and the cultural role of craft practices.

Caelli Jo Brooker
Artist Statement, October 2020

Caelli Jo Brooker
Stitched Paper Drawing (I–VI) 2020
paper fibre, thread, ink and crayon on paper
27 x 20cm (image) 35 x 27cm (paper)
$110.00 each (unframed)
inc postage and handling in Australia via Australia Post (insurance extra)

Gallery 139 presents
Those Hills: The Pilbara
Michelle Teear

solo online exhibition

This will be Michelle’s second solo exhibition presented by Gallery 139, developed from her travels during 2019 in Australia with her young family over 3 months. This body of work is based on the last part of the journey in the Pilbara area of Western Australia. Teear talks about how this particular landscape, the arid landscape struck something inside her, something she is still trying to understand. These paintings are the result of this amazing experience.

“On my first visit to the Pilbara in 2019 I saw those hills for the second time. Under a carpet pierced with light, we dreamt of another time. Here in this place by Dales gorge I saw what Fred (Williams) saw, these ancient rocks, the bones of our country, of an age we cannot fathom, here to see, here to rest by, here to wake to. Williams painted these hills, this landscape, and so to me it is familiar. It is in these rocks that I find a slow pace that I can depend on, that is unmoving in our eyes. I can look there and it is the same. To this land I am nothing, to me it is everything.

I lived in the landscape as I explored it’s crevices, its mounds and felt the earth shake beneath my feet. I need to know it, to be there, to find familiarity, I am no longer a foreigner in my own country. Time in the landscape is about absorbing a place, a mood, a weather. Sketches in gouache, and en plein air oils grasp at the immediacy of experience. These become the foundation of my studio practice.

My work comes from the land. Paints are made by hand in my studio. Oils made with ochre and iron oxides, egg tempera from freshly laid eggs from the chicken house next to my studio. The process of making my own paints and mediums offer another connection to the earth, earth pigments to paint the land. The process of living in the land and making work of and with it are cyclical like the rhythms of nature. “

~ Michelle Teear
September 2020

Starry Hill, 2020
tempera on ply
600 x 800mm (combined)
$3000.00 inc framing

MALCOLM SANDS
Feature Artist for Gallery 139
IGN ART FAIR (14/15/16 August)
ONLINE EXHIBITION
extended until end of November 2020

These painting are the result of a September 2019 artist’s expedition to the West MacDonnell Ranges organised by Leo Robba through Traveller Tours and World Expeditions. A highlight of the trip was painting on country with the traditional owners from the Iltja Ntjarra, Many Hands Art Centre.

Painting the first canvas, I started with my usual technique that I had applied to my Bylong Valley series. As the painting progressed, the landscape showed me how to paint it. This has created a dichotomy where the mind stopped and the painting started. Initially I was concerned at this division but as I progressed through the series, I realised that this symbolised the transition of thought necessary for me to complete the work.

Malcolm Sands
May 2020

ALL purchase enquires, please email ahn.wells@gmail.com

Professional framing and home/business artwork installation is available upon request and at special Art Fair prices.

ART MONEY available.

BELOW until 27 September.
These works will be posted direct via Australia Post, normal tracking included, extra insurance by request, viewings are unavailable at these one-off art fair prices.

Please contact Ahn 0434 886 450 or info@gallery139.com.au

ONLINE EXHIBITION
7 AUGUST - 27 SEPTEMBER 2020
SUBURBAN DAYDREAMS

Five artists reflect on the everyday, recreating the life of suburban Australia through painting, drawing and works on paper.

Living in the suburbs can be used as a indication of our overall art and culture. This idea was largely ignored until Architect Robin Boyd wrote in his bestselling book The Australian Ugliness (1960), “there is little or no collective pride in the suburb, only a huge collection of individual prides.” Opening the way for artists and writers to celebrate and find beauty in the world around them.

Exhibiting artists: Gillian Adamson, Tim Messiter, Anh Nguyen, Jane Collins, Andrew Finnie.

All works are for sale; price includes postage (insurance extra) within Australia. Please email ahn.wells@gmail.com for any enquiries.

Gillian Adamson

“My series, Foundations (2020), documents the arrangements of different houses, all organised in a similar, yet dying, fashion. The scenes portrayed in these artworks disrupt the modern world’s obsession with aesthetic and materialism, providing a view of a time passed.

This series is exploring the homes and lives of an older generation. The way furniture is arranged, the symmetry and sparseness, are something that I have always found intriguing. Yet, there is a familiarity and comfort to these scenes. They are reminiscent of my grandparent’s home, which has stayed unchanged for decades.

Through these artworks, I wanted to encapsulate the surrender of adaptation that is experienced later in life. As we grow older, we reach a certain point in our lives where aesthetic trends change faster than we are able to adapt. We stay still in an environment that is most comfortable to us, an environment that stays still in time.”

August 2020

Tim Messiter

“I have always been fascinated with Urban landscapes for their scale & sense of drama. Light behaves differently on built structures as opposed to nature. I find the demolition of the city buildings - which were once lived in, loved & looked after - very profound, and wanted to convey the sense of history remaining in the wreckage of what would have been busy and bustling places. 

In contrast, the suburban landscapes speak of quiet serenity and endurance, a a certain timelessness. In both cases I have attempted to reduce the compositions to shapes, planes and angles - shadows of where we spend our lives.”

August 2020

Anh Nguyen

“My paintings are a response to a visual experience - the motifs are familiar and intimate, like the street outside my window or spaces within my home.

The time between when I see something I’d like to paint and the actual painting process can vary from immediate to days, seasons, years. I take whatever approach is possible at that time ie from life, from photographs, from imagination & memory. I’m interested in abstracting real things, because I’m highly addicted to shapes and colour!”

August 2020

Andrew Finnie

“I am fascinated by how humans absorb familiar surroundings. Familiarity leads to perceptual blindness - a blindness to details. As we make our way through the world we don’t see everything around us. We have seen it all before - telegraph poles, gutters, cars, windows. So we fill in the details with our mind's eye, without really observing, using our imagination to create a virtual world.”

August 2020

Jane Collins

“My images are uplifting and inspire positive feelings. Inspired by my surroundings, I express movement with colour and line, depicting street and water scenes, people and interiors. The mixed media art works begin with a sketch. The sketch is transferred to a drypoint etching. It is hand printed. I add gouache paint, pencil and collage (lino prints).”

Jane Collins
Artist statement

Online exhibition
3 July - 30 August 2020
Group (works on paper)

Works on paper genre is diverse and often seen as a pathway for an artist towards painting, sculpture or installation. This exhibition celebrates the final nature of paper and the directness this medium has between the artist mark and the viewer.

All works are for sale; price includes postage (insurance extra) within Australia. Please email ahn.wells@gmail.com for any enquiries.

Exhibiting artists: Daniela Cristallo, Benjamin Gallagher, Camille Kersley, Matthew Tome.

Daniela Cristallo

Karloo walking track series, all works are on Italian cotton paper 18 x 26cm $120.00each

“This series of drawings references my exploration of 'Karloo walking track' Royal National Park NSW. I love those intimate moments of being in the landscape and evoking a sense of place.”

Daniela is an emerging Sydney-based artist, this is the second time she has exhibited with Gallery 139.

Please email ahn.wells@gmail.com for all sales; prices includes postage (insurance extra) within Australia.

Benjamin Gallagher

Patterns of Manual Labour series using soot on paper, all on 76 x 56cm paper $POA

“An exploration of the materials, construction techniques and labour contained within historical buildings. I contemplate the effort by those involved in their production; the hard, repetitive graft acknowledged and hereby committed to paper as slow, abstract and hypnotic linear patterns.  “

Benjamin is an emerging Newcastle-based artist, this is the second time he has exhibited with Gallery 139.

Please email ahn.wells@gmail.com for all sales; prices includes postage (insurance extra) within Australia.

Camille Kersley

$390.00 each

“Over time, my drawing practice has grown into a deeply reflective and intimate experience. 

Feeling and sensing my way into a strangely familiar but unknown land, exhilarating and tentative simultaneously, a tiny forward motion, a touching of, a listening to, and sometimes, an incredible knowing in the bones.

My practice demands that the whole of myself turns up for the gig, doing the necessary work learning how to live and grow in relationship to another. “

Camille is a Yass-based artist, this is the second time she has exhibited with Gallery 139.

Please email ahn.wells@gmail.com for all sales; prices includes postage (insurance extra) within Australia.

Matthew Tome

$180.00 each

“These hand made woodblock prints use the varying surface of the timber to achieve layers of colour. Woven into the grainy layers are images of faces from the past.”
Tome’s practice is multidisciplinary, with a focus on drawing while using many forms, methods and scales including painting, printmaking and installation.

Matthew is a Newcastle-based artist, he has exhibited regularly with Gallery 139 since 2015.

Please email ahn.wells@gmail.com for all sales; prices includes postage (insurance extra) within Australia.

Online exhibition
11 June - 31 July 2020
Solo - STILL LIFES by LYDIA MILLER

For this exhibition Miller returns to the historical genre of still-life with an invigorated appreciation of the picture plane. Her oil paintings continue to be vibrant, full of colour and pattern; consisting of the everyday objects found around the artist’s home. Bowls, plates, jugs and vases emergence into modern compositions on her canvas.

ALL purchase enquires, please email ahn.wells@gmail.com

Professional framing and home/business artwork installation is available upon request and at special Gallery 139 prices.

ART MONEY available.

WATCH OUR SLIDE SHOW ABOVE and view individual works below. Please contact ahn.wells@gmail.com for any enquiries during COVID-19.

17 April - 31 May 2020
Online exhibition 1

Thanks for joining us on our first ZOOM exhibition opening on Friday 17 April from 6pm
below a few screen shots from the zoom opening.

Artists: Paul Maher, Michelle Teear, Linda Greedy, Lydia Miller, Dino Consalvo, Daniela Cristallo, Malcolm Sands.

For purchase enquires please email ahn.wells@gmail.com during this COVID-19 time-period

Malcolm Sands Wollemi Dreaming II 2019 oil on canvas 23x 28cm framed $280.00
Malcolm Sands One way or another II 2019 oil on canvas 23x 28cm framed $280.00