Emerging Contemporaries

Exhibition essay
Catalogue essay: Dr Sarah Schmidt
Today there is a great wealth of artists,
craft and design people practicing in
Canberra, which is itself, a designed city.
The diversity of practice encompasses
many disciplines, bringing additional
interest, innovation and vitality, to the
national capital: from furniture making
and ceramics, to sculpture, and digital
art, to glass art, gold and silversmithing,
metalwork, painting, work on paper, and
textiles. This is an active community of
artists, craft and design people. From
the work of individual artists, to groups
engaged in collaborative making, we
are fortunate to enjoy such creativity
and outstanding practice in our art and
design community.
Another feature of the diversity of
practice across Canberra is the embrace
of very established practitioners,
as shown in ‘Intersection’, being
celebrated alongside emerging artists
that exhibitions such as ‘Emerging
Contemporaries’ support.
I would like to pay attention and respect
to the work of each of these emerging
artists with these short statements of
response:
Mika Benesh: ‘Weaving Futures’
encompasses responses to a number of
ritual Jewish objects, responses which
carry conceptual concerns as well as
those of craft and design. The ritual
mug shows a creative ingenuity both in
design and process. It is crafted from
woven candle wicks, dipped in molten
beeswax, cast in bronze, and then silverplated.
The finished object, for ritual use,
is functional yet full of mystery.
Millie Black: This artist’s explorations of
air and ground, her creative responses
made in thread and paper, make a
strong environmental statement about
a reverence for landscape. As both a
painter and textile artist with a feeling
for sculpture, Millie develops very
sensitive works showing an affinity with
nature. Bushwalking, and making with
natural dyes and pigments, are central to
her process.
Image: Bling Yiu, Be fruitful and multiply, 2021, handbuilding,
mid-fire. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
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