'UNEARTHED' Cooee Art, Sydney, NSW  2009

Unearthed - Stories Written in the Land 9th December - 31 January 2009 Aboriginal paintings are often described as landscapes but they are far more than this. They are all about nature, creation and ‘living’ history. We see at once, in form and action, stories written in the land. Each work unearths ancient themes that echo with their own distinctive spiritual pulse. The exhibition features important works by Freddy Timms, Jimmy Nerrimah, Kathleen Petyarre, Rover Thomas, Walangkura Napanangka, Jock Mosquito and exciting works by emerging artists Helen S Tiernan, Joanne Currie and Lloyd Kwilla. Adrian Newstead December 2008

'Temporal Fold' M16 Artspace and Gallery, Canberra, ACT 2003

I use familiar patterns from a domestic past as a medium to interrogate, challenge and expose the many contradictions that lie below society's surfaces.

My concerns include the validation of the feminine experience and its transformation from 'low art to high art' through the use of personal metaphors based on my own sensitivities to life in the home, as a child, wife and mother. I have also drawn on my past practice in graphic illustration and production where I worked with textiles to dress the female body. More broadly I am also commenting on the corrosive effects of being seduced by the superficial values in our materialistic/acquisitive society and the allied loss of the spiritual.

'Species' The Hive Gallery, Canberra, ACT 2002

'Species' is an art exhibition inspired by Canberra 's Floriade. I use flowers to explore the human experience. The use of introduced and native species reveals much about the history of Indigenous and settler cultures. At another level the "flower "is associated with rituals and ceremonies - weddings, funerals and other celebrations. However, behind the seductive surfaces may lie less palatable realties.

'Graduating Exhibition' ANU Canberra School of Art Gallery, Canberra, ACT 2001

I use familiar patterns from a domestic past as a medium to interrogate, challenge and expose the many contradictions that lie below society's surfaces

While both my drawings and paintings in this exhibition deal with the overall issue of feminine identity and the challenges mentioned below, the methods and processes differ:

My concerns include the validation of the feminine experience and its transformation from 'low art to high art' through the use of personal metaphors based on my own sensitivities to life. I have also drawn on my past practice in graphic illustration and production where I worked with textiles to dress the female body. More broadly I am also commenting on the corrosive effects of being seduced by superficial values in our materialistic/acquisitive society and the allied loss of the spiritual.

Another aim is to challenge the denigration of pattern and decoration and its extraordinary potential for art making. Within my own Aboriginal heritage surface makings and patterning of objects were demeaned as merely decorative until recent times. I identify with and take strength from artists such as Henri Matisse, Miriam Schapiro, Susan Norrie and Robert Zakanitch who dared to use and exploit pattern and decoration as mark making for diverse and serious ends. Matisse dared to use terms 'abstraction 'and 'decoration' interchangeably, Schapiro 'closes the gap between the arts and domestic crafts' and Norrie exploits contradictions through exploring seductive painterly surfaces from 'feminine spheres' of experience whilst Duchamp proved that 'context can make art'. Context including scale, colour and allusion, is a potent force in my work.

My drawings focus on the internal, interior spaces of the mind and body. This led to a series of drawings in charcoal rubbed and worked into coloured grounds exploring the eroticism of fabric, folds and the female body. It is suggestive of secret recesses and voluptuous forms with mystical overtones induced through veiling. Animated by the interplays of light and air heightening desire and passion, the female form is again referenced through drawings of vessels and corseted container forms, the illusory and various notions of beauty including making the ordinary extraordinary.

Where as my paintings focus on external shared spaces, the feminine experience remains and the use of lushly patterned and emotionally charged surfaces continues. Flowers continue as a powerful metaphor combined with wallpaper designs to evoke past associations with adorned domestic interiors, converting objective into subjective (eg houses into homes) and feminising spaces. The siting of these surfaces within architectural frameworks such as cornices, architraves, mantelpieces etc. both increase the tension between the feminine and the masculine, and contextualise the viewing space as a total experience not dissimilar to an installation work.