The Impressionists

Sanja Pahoki is a Croatian born visual artist currently living in Melbourne, Australia. Pervasive technologies such as photography, video and neon are employed by Sanja to explore observations from everyday life. With a background in philosophy and psychology, and working primarily with photography, Sanja is a keen and sensitive observer of social interactions. Existential concerns such as irony, anxiety and angst are prevalent in her artworks. Sanja is currently the Head of Photography at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and is represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne.

Jemi Gale is an emotion painter and pop girl.

Matthew Harris (b. 1991, Wangaratta, Victoria). In primary school he won a plastic trophy for photographs, but failed most art classes since then and has avoided art school. Matthew has presented works in galleries including Wangaratta Art Gallery, Blindside, Strange Neighbour and the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne. He has featured in magazines such as Excerpt, Frankie and VICE, and various web-based platforms. Matthew lives and works in Melbourne. He likes flowers and long romantic walks by the sea at sunset.

Lou Hubbard uses various media, from any discipline, to examine the nature of training, submission, and subordination. Basic materials of domestic and institutional utility—very often personal objects—are tried and tested, then shaped into formal relationships. Objects are subjected to various modes of control and duress through which they must submit to her rules, and emotional resonances are drawn out through careful selection and placement of these found and readily-at-hand materials.

Lou Hubbard teaches in the School of Art, VCA and is represented by Sarah Scout Presents Melbourne.

Michael Kennedy (b. 1990, Myrtleford, Australia) currently lives and works in Melbourne, Australia.

Michael graduated at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2018 where he was the recipient of the Ursula Hoff Institute Inc Drawing and Painting Award. Since then he has undergone an artist in residence program at DÔ-SÔ AIR in Japan. His work has been shown with artists spaces in Australia and Japan. In addition to painting, he is a trained musician whose practice encompasses performance, video and sound.

Kalinda Vary’s practice explores ideas of emotionality, vulnerability and power, humour and humiliation, constraints of language and the problems with representations of identity. Her recent work concentrates on queer concerns of the body, performance within social structures and imposed cultural identities.

Carla Milentis (b. 1994, AUS) is a Melbourne based artist who completed her Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours (2019), majoring in Sculpture and Spatial Practice at the Victorian College of the Arts. Throughout her practice Milentis has been consistent in the continuous development of her work, which spans across multiple disciplines. Carla Milentis has participated within exhibitions both locally and internationally and over that time has received important commissions and celebrated awards for her work. During 2017 Milentis focussed on co-curating a number of large group exhibitions in collaboration with artist William Hawkins and SpaceSpace Gallery, whilst also exhibiting and continuing her artistic practice. Currently Carla Milentis lives in Paris, France where she is developing a site-specific body of work as part of an ongoing project.

Sarah Brasier b. 1990 Ballarat is a current Gertrude Contemporary studio artist (2020-2023). She is interested in friendship as a creative motivator and aims to build a supportive community of people in the art world. Working across multiple mediums with a foundation in painting and expanded practice including; animation and performance based video, each of Sarah’s works might be viewed as a scene from a life-long revenge tale, punctuated by moments of despair, happiness and simple pleasures. These psychodramatic scenes incorporate astute observations, absurdist thoughts and draw on personal histories employing bright colours and humour to offset the work’s often dark origins. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art and graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2018. She also holds a Bachelor of Applied Science. In 2017 she was awarded a New Colombo Plan scholarship by the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs enabling her to live in Japan for 18 months and completed a semester at Joshibi University of Fine Art in Tokyo. In 2016 she founded the Winter1706 art fair, which presented a series of exhibitions by emerging artists across a suite of vacated apartments on St Kilda Rd in Melbourne. This was followed by two more shows in the ‘Winter’ exhibition series: WNTR Echo Location and WNTR x Gertrude. In 2018 she curated ‘and on the eyes, black sleep of night’ at SEVENTH gallery Melbourne and toured a second iteration of the show to Sydney as a part of the firstdraft emerging curator’s program. She sits on the SEVENTH gallery board of directors and currently holds the voluntary position of Secretary within the organisation.

William Hawkins (b.1992) is a Melbourne based artist and curator whose practice takes inspiration from philosophy while ultimately aiming to question painting as a medium. His expanded conception of painting includes: performance, installation and film. Common themes in his work include: agency, humour, contradiction and desire. Hawkins completed a BFA (Drawing and Print Media) in 2015 and in 2018 was awarded Honours (first class). In 2018 Hawkins was the recipient of the Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship and the Lowensteins Arts Management prize. In 2019 he was a First commissions recipient and completed a graduate residency in the Drawing and Print Media department at the VCA. Hawkins is housed in the Macquarie Group Collection (Sydney).

Nat Thomasis a Melbourne-based artist and writer. Thomas maintains a diverse and independent practice that considers storytelling as the basis of culture. Her work engages with the mass media and its role in the how we see each other and the world.

Sarah Brasier b. 1990 Ballarat is a current Gertrude Contemporary studio artist (2020-2023). She is interested in friendship as a creative motivator and aims to build a supportive community of people in the art world. Working across multiple mediums with a foundation in painting and expanded practice including; animation and performance based video, each of Sarah’s works might be viewed as a scene from a life-long revenge tale, punctuated by moments of despair, happiness and simple pleasures. These psychodramatic scenes incorporate astute observations, absurdist thoughts and draw on personal histories employing bright colours and humour to offset the work’s often dark origins. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art and graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2018. She also holds a Bachelor of Applied Science. In 2017 she was awarded a New Colombo Plan scholarship by the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs enabling her to live in Japan for 18 months and completed a semester at Joshibi University of Fine Art in Tokyo. In 2016 she founded the Winter1706 art fair, which presented a series of exhibitions by emerging artists across a suite of vacated apartments on St Kilda Rd in Melbourne. This was followed by two more shows in the ‘Winter’ exhibition series: WNTR Echo Location and WNTR x Gertrude. In 2018 she curated ‘and on the eyes, black sleep of night’ at SEVENTH gallery Melbourne and toured a second iteration of the show to Sydney as a part of the firstdraft emerging curator’s program. She sits on the SEVENTH gallery board of directors and currently holds the voluntary position of Secretary within the organisation.

William Hawkins (b.1992) is a Melbourne based artist and curator whose practice takes inspiration from philosophy while ultimately aiming to question painting as a medium. His expanded conception of painting includes: performance, installation and film. Common themes in his work include: agency, humour, contradiction and desire. Hawkins completed a BFA (Drawing and Print Media) in 2015 and in 2018 was awarded Honours (first class). In 2018 Hawkins was the recipient of the Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship and the Lowensteins Arts Management prize. In 2019 he was a First commissions recipient and completed a graduate residency in the Drawing and Print Media department at the VCA. Hawkins is housed in the Macquarie Group Collection (Sydney).