Exhibition Review: Visual Arts | Brian Rope
BEYOND: An
art tonic, making sense of this discombobulating time by Kati Gorgenyi, Toni
Hassan, John Pratt, and Ujala Aftab
Chapel
Gallery, Charles Sturt University | 7 – 23 May 2026
We read, hear and view true, distorted, opionated and fake news stories every day. We struggle to make sense of so much that reaches us via newspapers, radios, TV broadcasts, the diverse accounts on all the different social media platforms, and even in the views of family and friends. Are you distressed by the state of our world and the assault of saturating, doomsday news?
The four artists
in this exhibition, Kati Gorgenyi, Toni Hassan, John Pratt, and Ujala Aftab, each
grappled with what it meant for them to be living in the information age and to
be perplexed by the speed of environmental and political change. They used diverse
materials to address the complex issues.
Their joint project was conceived in 2024 with shared questions: 'How do we sit with what we are seeing and hearing?’ and ‘How might we move beyond grief?’’ Newspapers became a common material for them - referencing news and the notion of global legacy. The four artists found comfort in talking about ‘The News’ together and about different processes they were exploring and adopting. At that time, all four were Canberra-based. Hassan has since relocated to Adelaide but continued producing works for the show - and has taken a leading role pulling it all together.
John
Pratt says that, for him, “overwhelmed is too strong a word, but we come into
contact continuously with ‘The News’ as a field, pulled into a mode of
distress. If you're empathetic to some of the things that are happening, it’s
hard to contend with or accommodate.” His work seeks to juxtapose natural
elements, digital codes and media as a way of exploring the impact of
technology on the way we understand our place in the world.
Pratt
has contributed woodcut and collage pieces.
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| John Pratt - Passage, woodcut and collage work, 2025. |
Kati Gorgenyi says she found herself in long periods of avoidance, when she just could not bear seeing and hearing about the state of the world, destruction from all directions and the way people in power present themselves, and how the media reports. She then began playing with newspapers - altering the material, making sculptures, and painting with an encaustic medium. She recycled, reformed and reshaped the material seeking to create an alternative environment.
Gorgenyi’s contributions are wax, pigment and newspaper pieces plus an installation of pots, newspapers and bamboo constructions. Seeing a small and peaceful part the outside world through the window behind her installation was somehow incongruous.
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Kati Gorgenyi - Beyond 3 – wax, pigment, newspaper, 2026 (installation shot – Brian Rope) |
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Kati Gorgenyi - Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow - Installation: Pots, newspaper, bamboo, glue, 2026 |
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Kati Gorgenyi - Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow? (installation shot showing outside world behind – Brian Rope) |
Ujala Aftab is
a watercolour and textile artist who has been working with pattern and repetition,
embroidering on transfer prints of newspapers. On her Instagram account, she
describes her artwork very simply as Experimental Embroidery Art.
Aftab is showing four mixed media pieces.
Ujala Aftab - Detail of Weariness – Mixed media: embroidery on canvas with acrylic and ink, 2024.
Toni Hassan
also speaks about the news. “It enters us, the drama, the conflict. It can
change us, as stories do. I have, for some years, been thinking about ways to
express the impacts and how art can help me make sense of human history over
time. I wanted to go beyond doomsday narratives, to something perhaps richer.
I’d also become increasingly intentional about reducing my news consumption,
after being a journalist and opinion writer for many years. Drawing became an
accessible way to make sense of things, begin to frame history and my place in
it, and also meditate on the themes that surfaced. Rocks became a motif for the
heaviness of the world and ancientness.”
Hassan contributes a range of coloured pencil on paper artworks. They are complex and need thorough exploration to maximise the impact each has on us, just as the barrage of news and commentary from both traditional and social media that surrounds us every day also impacts us.
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| Toni Hassan – The grief and sense of loss that I often attribute to a failure in my personality is actually a feeling of emptiness, where a beautiful and strange otherness should be encountered / A short history of alienation (with Wearing The News, Air-drying clay and newspaper), pencil on paper, 2024 |
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Top: Too much to chew (information without integration frustrates wisdom) – pencil on paper, 2026 Bottom: The woman who ate too much news – pencil on paper, 2026 (Installation shot by Brian Rope of two works by Toni Hassan) |
This is an exhibition well worth visiting to thoroughly explore the messages conveyed.
This review is also available on the author's blog.
