Avant Gardens ed. 6
Welcome to Avant Gardens, a blog/newsletter where I explore all things strange, experimental, and exciting in the arts.
Hi all, I hope you’ve been going well. As usual, I’ve been flooded with marking and teaching lately, although this month there was something a bit special that happened - I curated an exhibition held at Goodspace Gallery. I thought that this edition of Avant Gardens would be a special issue, showcasing my fellow artists and the work they presented at Strange & Un/Natural (along with some Behind-the-Scenes shots at the end). Enjoy :)
Nick Taylor - the language of flowers
the language of flowers is an audio narrative in 5 parts, each represented by a different flower in Victorian floriographic style. The piece unearths unspoken human desperation and uses the symbolism of delicately preserved flowers to examine impermanence. Written, produced and mixed by Nick Taylor, the music traverses dream-pop, post-rock, and electronic soundscapes.
Featuring musical contributions from Alec Clark and Seána Dubh.
Nick Taylor is a Sydney-based sound artist and composer who has worked across animation, film, and video games. A graduate of the University of Technology Sydney, his practice is concerned with the fragility of memory and the aesthetics of the uncanny. Through a hybrid of ‘natural’ field recordings and ‘unnatural’ synthesis, he constructs liminal sonic environments that feel both familiar and estranged. Check out more of his work here.
Zachary Floresta - Collection of Works
This collection brings together a series of paintings that exist independently yet remain connected through recurring themes of connection and disconnection, as well as an exploration of contrast in light and colour. Each work is created on MDF board using acrylic paint and black ink brush pen.
The largest piece, Dreams Grow Darker (pictured), draws inspiration from two stills from the 2024 film Nosferatu, reflecting the emotional distance and inner conflict experienced by its central character. The remaining works are informed by my own photographic practice, including images captured on heavily expired 35mm film rolls, which introduced unexpected distortions in shape and colour. Several pieces incorporate collaged elements, combining photographs taken in both Sydney and New York City. Together, these works explore memory, perception, and the visual tension between clarity and fragmentation.
Zachary Floresta is a Sydney-based artist and musician creating paintings in a layered acrylic and wood-based medium. He focuses on themes of the weird and slightly odd, taking inspiration from personal experiences and other creative practices like music and photography, often exploring forms of connection in darker-toned artworks. You can check out his insta here and his channel on 2SER Noise#Works.
Oliver Whitehouse - Fatigue (a body without a pulse)
Framed against an alternate version of the 'Y2k Millennium Problem’, Fatigue (a body without a pulse) follows the morning after the widespread collapse of the world's computer systems. Subjecting the human body to the bizarre logic of the post-internet, the video installation depicts a subliminal world of paralysis and an entropy of control, envisioning what happens when the digital systems that drive our existence fail.
Choreography / Dancers: Cameron Turner, Ko Yamada
Styling: Leo Whitehouse
Score: Seána Dubh
Oliver Whitehouse is a Chinese-British Director, Photographer, & Visual Artist based in Sydney (Gadigal). His work moves fluidly between mediums, drawing influence from experimental photography, internet phenomena, and the aesthetics of the eerie. With a visual language marked by a sense of the surreal, he navigates spaces where memory becomes disembodied, and the familiar becomes uncanny. You can check out more of his work here.
Fiona Doyle - Collection of Works
The works included in Strange & Un/Natural were all created with acrylic paint on raw scraps of canvas, or other fabrics, and represent a few different ideas. The portrait-esque artworks depict impressions of human faces that are part-flesh partskull, appearing ghostly and emaciated. They are about aging and death; about living in our bodies while knowing they are subject to a slow decay.
Face the Wall depicts a person sitting on the ground, facing a doorway, in a grimy room. The image was painted onto a piece of sheer fabric, allowing the wall or backdrop to become part of the picture, creating a slightly different scene every time it is displayed. The untitled 6-piece work (pictured) featuring rows of dots tells a cryptic coded story, while the linear untitled works represent the vague abstract quality of an indoor structure from a dream.
Fiona S. Doyle (BFA, Dip Ed) is an Irish-Australian artist who primarily works with 2D mediums such as paint and graphite. Her works are existential and expressionistic, exploring themes such as dreams, memory, and life & death. You can check out more of her work here.
Seána Dubh - The Other Edis
Misty crystal mountains, a haunting factory filled with the sounds of robotic insects, and a ritualistic forest...
Step into The Other Edis, a VR experience that leads you down the eerie path into uncanny dream space. Blurring the boundaries between the familiar and unfamiliar, this original work features thirteen unique realms and explores the concept of uncanniness in environmental space. Dreading the rapidly moving sophistication of new creative audiovisual technologies, this work is the artist’s rejection of technological perfection, instead embracing the human weird and imperfect DIY creations.
Seána Dubh (she/her) is a Gadigal-based audiovisual artist specialising in sound art and electro-acoustic composition, experimental media, and immersive and virtual reality technologies. With a background as an audio engineer in the film and television industry, she is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Technology Sydney, where she teaches experimental audiovisual media and sound studies. Her art is driven by her fascination with the strange, the eerie, and the uncanny.
I’m so very proud of what we put together and how successful the night was. It was also a pleasure to work with the team at Goodspace Gallery and the Lord Gladstone (would definitely recommend). Who knows, maybe there will be another exhibition of fresh works in the foreseeable future… for now, see you next month with Avant Gardens.
