22.2.25 – 22.3.25
OPENING 3pm SATURDAY 22 FEBRUARY

Elegy is a response to personal and collective grief made by two artists whose works are in conversation with each other in a way that reflects their daily conversations on paint and life.

Lizzie Hall’s paintings are of the Aral Sea, now a desert because of Soviet mismanagement. Her late father worked there as part of a remediation effort to try and save what was left. Hall’s source material are her photos taken during a visit to the region with her father in 2001. “I have been painting the absence, the distance between then and now, in an attempt to retrieve my father and to retrieve a missing sea and in doing so, let the salt pour out.”

Kate Stevens’ paintings are of drone footage shown on Russian and BBC news of Aleppo, Syria from 2016. Missing from these images of empty ruins is the devastating human toll of bombing civilian populations. Stevens’ work looks at how distant conflicts elicit responses from half a world away.

Also opening Thursday 27 February at Canberra Contemporary Platform, Manuka, is The Reckoning, a powerful series of paintings by Kate Stevens examining the impact of alleged war crimes committed by Australia’s Special Forces during the war in Afghanistan, and exploring how these events shape Australian cultural identity, questioning the narratives we uphold and the voices we silence.

Lizzie Hall and Kate Stevens live and work in Braidwood, NSW and both studied at the ANU School of Art.

Lizzie Hall has been a finalist in multiple art prizes, including the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (2007), the Mosman Art Prize (2013/2024), the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2017), The Alice Prize (2022) and the KAAF Art Prize (2022-Highly commended/2023/2024). Her work has been shown at Monash University, Albury Regional Art Gallery, Tuggeranong Arts Centre, numerous ARIs and was included in the Canberra Biennial in 2020 and 2022.

Kate Stevens focuses on Australian narratives of distant conflicts, most recently with works addressing the failures of Australia’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan. Her work has been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions including at Sydney Contemporary and the Canberra Contemporary Art Space, and she received the 2021 Evelyn Chapman Art Award. Her paintings are held in the collections of Artbank, ACT Legislative Assembly, ACT Health, Canberra Museum and Gallery and numerous private collections, and she has twice been the recipient of the prestigious Portia Geach Memorial Award for portraiture.