BLUEPRINT Exhibitions program

Venita Mooney is a Yuwi, Torres Strait and Australian South Sea Islander artist who shares personal stories of family, cultural history and connection to place through photography and digital art. Born with a visual impairment, Mooney uses photography as a tool to capture her unique view of the world and Family Archive includes family portraits as a means of documenting her personal stories.

Gyeongmin Im was born in Yongin-Si, South Korea, and moved to Mackay in 2022. Im's creative practice manifested early, initially as watercolour landscapes. However, during his time at university, Im began experimenting with digital art. As a self-professed perfectionist, Im gravitated toward digital illustration because it gave him the freedom to experiment with various versions of his artwork and allowed him to refine and explore his ideas more freely.

Im singles out Dadaist Marcel Duchamp as a particular influence.Like Duchamp, Im seeks to induce new states of consciousness, imaging new realms that challenge and break down the rigid boundaries of society.

Im sees the world he lives in as dystopian, and the series Monologue 1 offers an alternative. In this series, the artist unites art and science, using this dual lens to examine the human condition. He explores other dimensions and deconstructs human movement to view it through a different lens. Im’s work encourages curiosity urging viewers to take notice of the extraordinary world around them and question binary oppositions dictated by society.

The latest exhibiting artist in Blueprint Foodspace is Mirani High School student and emerging photographer, Tahlia Manley. Manley was born in Logan but moved to North Queensland as a young child. Her passion for photography began at an early age, starting with simple backyard wildlife photographs and ‘selfie moments’ with her family.

In this series, Manley echoes the wisdom that can be found in the animal kingdom—a salient reminder in a turbulent twenty first century world. In Any Step Starts the Journey here, Manley admires ‘small creatures supporting each other to move forward.’ In Threads of Courage Manley observed that for a spider weaving its web, a single strand can easily break but the threads combined create beauty and strength. Together her work has a playful, nostalgic quality to it, seeking to depict the world from different angles.

The third exhibiting artist in Blueprint Foodspace gallery is Mackay born, Lachlan Billington. Billington was born in 2005 and currently attends Pioneer State High School. He became interested in photography at an early age after his mother bought him his first camera. More recently, Billington has been influenced by fine art photographer Barbara Cole. Much of his work now is shot underwater.

Acceptance in Blue

The series here, Acceptance in Blue, chronicles Lachlan’s journey toward self-acceptance. Billington obscures his visage with sheer fabric, a metaphor for the seen and unseen parts of our human condition. The contrast of light and dark in his work references times of uncertainty in his life along with the illuminating moments of reassurance.

Second Blueprint Foodspace artist, Matteo Calisti was born in Bologna, Italy and moved to Mackay in 2019. Calisti’s creative practice began at an early age, working in paint, ink drawing and clay sculpture, before moving into digital art in 2013.

Digital illustration affords Calisti a freedom to take his practise in ever changing directions. His work has an unbound, dreamlike quality to it with a nod to the Italian comics he grew up reading.

Hints, Echoes and Breadcrumbs

Calisti describes this series as “being about the critical blueprint of a human being; their instants, feelings, desires, hopes and fears.” This new series explores human consciousness — the flow of thoughts and experiences, some corrupted and lost and some images preserved forever in the folds of our brain.

Muddy Grimes is a tattoo artist who moved to Mackay in 2012. He started his creative journey plastering paste-ups in the Gold Coast. Menagerie of the Criminally Insane feature Grimes’ fantastical and vibrant animal characters, which can also be seen in in Mackay’s award-winning 5th Lane, Mackay City Centre.

Menagerie of the Criminally Insane

Immediately upon hearing the words Blueprint I thought of the original sketch you may use when creating a work of art. Almost never will I create a final piece without first sketching my intentions out, and that was my concept for this series of works. I wanted to show even a small part of the original sketch I use to build upon while also showing the end results. The sketch being the ‘blueprint’. Each piece is torn to give a peek at what the original intention was while also being able to see the final product. A blueprint to me is more of an idea or direction than a set plan.

After spending eighteen years away from Yuwi Country, Venita Mooney has re-established deep connections with family, culture and community. Return to Country is a body of work that includes photographic landscapes significant to the artist and images of her family and the Mackay Indigenous community. For Mooney, these works are a celebration of coming home.

The third exhibiting artist in Blueprint 2nd Lane is multi-disciplinary and self-confessed scribbler, Annie Armstrong. The artist, who was born in Mackay, has been developing her practice by experimenting with different mediums- with particular interest in forming unusual textures in her work.

Armstrong’s love of art was cemented in high school when she was exposed to Tony Druery’s linocut practice. Druery’s linocut series sought to capture the disorientation felt by Mackay residents during the late 2000’s construction boom. These works influenced Armstrong’s practice and she went on win St Patricks College Tony Druery award for Encouragement in Visual Art.

Annie Armstrong’s inspiration for her series Don’t Cry Over Spilled Coffee explores her mental health journey with each artwork in the series depicting a different phase in a tumultuous journey. The latter works in the series are a reaction to Armstrong developing a greater connection to self and becoming more secure in her practice.

Experimenting with different strokes and splashes, creating surprising shapes, patterns and colours was also part of Armstrong’s journey. For this series she used mixed media including acrylic pens and various strengths of coffee applied using a range of techniques.

The second exhibiting artist in Blueprint 2nd Lane is interdisciplinary practitioner, Elizabeth Hamon. She currently lives in the Whitsundays and has recently branched into digital art. Hamon's love of art started early, a passion she shared with her father as they had many adventures in art galleries and museums.

The artist's inspiration for the series Glitch in the Me-trix stemmed from her experience of the 2020 Covid19 lockdown, where she spent more time online and found that she noticed disparities between what people were posting and how she knew them to be in reality. This began her questioning of the 'authentic self' and where there was any overlap between reality and virtual personas.

The use of text within her work was a personal challenge to express unfiltered thoughts when creating accompanying striking imagery. As Hamon knew her work would be observed by others, she pondered whether it would affect her artistic decisions. Would she obscure words and passages to curate the 'idea' online persona? How affected would her creative decisions be how she was perceived? Hamon can never 'step outside of her own box' but is ever curious about how her 'true self', manifests online.

Autumn Skuthorpe is an experienced Maori Wahine inclusive arts practitioner who proudly celebrates the voices and stories of our region.

Skuthorpe enjoys working across many mediums including music, film, visual arts, and performance. Her visual arts practice centres around graffiti, zine-making and lo-fi roots, and there is a strong self-portrait element to her work. In 2006, her 2D friend and alter ego ‘Gypsy Kat’ was born and has featured in her work ever since.

The series here, A Love Letter to 4740, is a celebration of space. It is an acknowledgement of “little worlds around us that we may not notice”; a reflection of Skuthorpe’s Maori roots, which connect her to the natural landscape. In this exhibition, Gypsy Kat is featured in the local natural environment.

A Love Letter to 4740 also honours small details of the site-specific work’s surroundings by placing her work amongst the tags and graffiti already there, acknowledging the importance and authenticity of the existing street art.