Jana Vodesil-Baruffi was born in the Czech Republic in 1957 and from childhood developed a keen interest in art, sport and nature. After finishing five years training as an Interior Designer, she escaped communist Czech Republic in 1981 and arrived in Perth penniless but ready to work and create my own destiny.
Laura Barth is a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist based in the mountains of North Carolina, United States. Primary media include analog and experimental photography, graphite, charcoal, watercolor, and linocut prints. Laura currently exhibits her work at Calendula gallery in St. Paul and has had work awarded, published, and exhibited across the country.
Dawn Smith is an artist hailing from Detroit who is embarked on her creative journey as a tattooist, refining her craft from a tender age and cultivating a prosperous career spanning two decades. Dawn's art serves as a celebration of the divine feminine, manifesting in surrealistic and symbolic compositions. Often, her pieces incorporate disembodied parts of feminine figures intertwined with animals, skillfully subverting the male gaze while accentuating the profound connection between humanity and the natural world.
Tom Christophersen is a Sydney based, non-binary, Queer performer and visual artist who is as petrified of beautiful things and death as much as he is transfixed by them. It is primarily the car crashing of these two themes which permeate the surrealistic, often dark portraits and films he makes. Tom works almost exclusively on watercolour paper and creates mixed media works which comprise elements of drawing and painting to produce highly rendered, tonally realistic but slightly illustrative figurative works.
Hera Mysterium's determined to leave a twisted but beautiful mark in this world. She likes to explore the fusion of gothic elegance and macabre beauty, inviting people to dance on the edge of darkness and light. With a touch of the macabre and a penchant for the surreal, her work explores a world where darkness and beauty intertwine. "I want to evoke a sense of unease and fascination in anyone who experiences my art."
In 1998, Randy Gaul joined Industrial Light & Magic as a concept designer. Prior to joining ILM, he worked for seven years as a freelance storyboard and concept artist for such companies as Wild Brain, MTV and Disney.
Désirée Sydow is a self portrait photographer based in London, UK. After a chronic injury forced her to give up drawing and painting, she decided to focus solely on the medium of photography. This background in traditional art has heavily shaped her current photography style, with her other main influence being fashion photography. As a self-portrait photographer, she is not just the photographer but also the model, portraying characters that represent different facets of herself and at the same time of all human beings.
Brian Hoang was born in Vietnam a few years after the war ended. Two years later, together with his parents they left the country and spent about 6 months in a refugee camp before relocating to Canada. When he was a young kid, his dad would often pose as action figures and draw them for him. Seeing how Brian was able to take a real-life object and turn it into a drawing was inspiring. Once he discovered comic books in grade 6, art became something Brian wanted to do for a living when he grew up.
Through Jasmina Kirsch's meticulous practice, subtle forms undergo transformative journeys, leaving viewers with profound reflections on the limitations of the physical body and the boundless realms of the metaphysical. Jasmina's exploration of femininity in her paintings and drawings is nuanced, often referencing fugaciousness and mortality through symbols like skeletons.
Natasha Zraikat is a Gold Coast (Yugambeh Country) based artist uses a carefully constructed aesthetic vocabulary of fantastical elements and deliberately executed realism to visually rekindle man’s connection with the natural world. Born in California to Jordanian and Russian-Ukrainian parents, Natasha immigrated to Australia in 1990 where she has lived ever since.
Kristine and Colin Poole are figurative sculptors from the United States. Balancing classical inspiration with contemporary expressive realism, their work highlights the beauty and inherent narrative qualities of the human form. Developed on the timeless fundamentals of anatomy and attention to detail, their clay and bronze figurative sculptures feature diverse themes that open doors to conversation.
Ramona Russu is a Romanian painter, graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels and settled in Corsica in 2014 to pursue my creative journey. Her artistic work explores the complexity of women's emotions and experiences and highlights the idea of imperfect beauty through monochrome pieces enhanced with 24-carat gold leaf.