In December and January, Starkwhite Queenstown presents an exhibition of Australian artists Rebecca Baumann, Paul Davies, Bill Henson, Jonny Niesche, and Gemma Smith. Offering an unexpected sensation or nuance, each of the works in the exhibition ask us to think again.

Bill Henson uses photography to capture the human condition in visual form, creating large scale works that blend formal techniques with cinematography and dreamscape. Henson’s celebrated Paris Opera Project series brings the emotional effect of music into visual form, combining surface and depth to reflect a liminal space between the mystical and the real.

Rebecca Baumann’s kinetic works are shaped by her interest in psychology, sociology, and art history. Using light, colour and random pattern movement, she seeks to activate viewers’ emotions in fleeting and unexpected ways. 

Jonny Niesche’s work is well known for its beauty and urban allure but it can also be a seductive sensory overload, a negotiation of intensity and intimacy as well as a ticket to an elegant futuristic realm. His bold chromatic expanses and saturated tones that dissolve from one hue to the next in an unfolding play of light and colour are surrounded by brass frames that capture the audience as unwitting performers in the work.

Paul Davies works seek to trigger our senses along similar lines. Building upon an alluring mid-century aesthetic, his painting seems rooted in an optimistic post-World War II suburban dream, but there is also an eeriness to be had. 

Gemma Smith’s bold and gesturally painted surfaces create a dialogue between colour, form, and surface. Her experimentation with the language of painting crosses very pale or almost black art works alongside characteristic gestural paintings.