Using the materiality of paint to suspend moments in time, the artists consider the empowering states of slowness and mindfulness in an ever-consuming, fast-paced capitalist context.
Emma Lynes is an emerging artist living and working in Naarm/Melbourne who completed her Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) (Honours) in 2024. Lynes works primarily in oils and gouache to explore the expressive possibilities of the space between abstraction and representation. Seeking inspiration from the natural environment, Lynes lets the slow painting process guide her to reflect upon the beauty that exists within the minutiae of the everyday. Lynes reflects upon her internal landscape to draw out her experience of close observation and expand upon feelings of reverence and connection felt within a present moment. With natural colour palettes, her work is informed by the sublime, romantic and aesthetic sensibilities.
Molly Morris-McGinty is an emerging painter living and working in Naarm/Melbourne who graduated with a Bachelor of Art (Fine Art) (Honours) at RMIT University in 2024. Morris-McGinty’s work considers alternate ways of seeing as expressed through paint. She creates scenes drawn from night encounters that conjure moments of wonder and quiet reflection from walking alone in the dark. The artist is inspired by the eerie absence of human presence in this setting. She is particularly interested in the interplay between the anxieties of being alone at night as a woman and the contradictory relief of the solitude and stillness it provides in a fast-paced society.
Vittoria Cugno is an emerging artist living and working in Naarm/Melbourne. In 2024, she completed a Bachelor of Art (Fine Art) (Honours) Degree at RMIT University. Cugno specialises in figurative and representational oil paintings. Her practice involves taking snapshots of fleeting, candid, everyday interactions of human connection that develop into large-scale works, expressing a sense of momentariness. Cugno uses vivid colours and experimental painting techniques to express emotion and the sensations experienced in the captured moment, finding reverence for these brief moments amid the chaotic noise of our capitalist world.
Image: Molly Morris-McGinty, nightlight (detail), 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.
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Chloe Rose Thomas’ exhibition, 'Can I Hold You?' centres on queer community and embodied practices of care, exploring what it means to take traditional photographic portraits of non-normative bodies and the histories they represent.
'Portable Stillness' (2025), is an ongoing spatial installation that explores how the making of miniature objects and floating altar-like displays can express memory, collection, and the domestic in transition. Motivated by the instability of diasporic living and continual relocation, Ko Jou Chen constructs handmade structures that carry memory and presence across her shifting environments.
'Slip' is a practice-led research project that explores the poetic qualities of the bluestones that have been discarded in recent construction works around RMIT University. Through the process of moulding and casting these stones into beeswax, Noah Bridger hopes to reimagine Melbourne’s urban landscape.
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.
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