Welcome
to correspondences. Our aim is to create lasting people connections across cultures through the medium of art.
to correspondences. Our aim is to create lasting people connections across cultures through the medium of art.
Aarti Jadu
13 March ––1 June 2024
Aarti Jadu (Naarm/Melbourne) is a multi-disciplinary artist, vocalist and composer who works closely with the voice and composes cinematic, atmospheric pieces played live through electronic instrumentation, on occasion conducting ensembles. Pairing classical elements, currently referencing chamber music, baroque and various folk traditions, with the timbre of techno-flavoured synthesizers, 808, and pop autotune, their work is idiosyncratic and based on context, place and state of being. The work revolves around the power of embodying sound, an interest originating from her lifelong relationship with devotional music and group singing practice.
In 2021 and 2022, Aarti landed nominations for the 18th Australian Music Prize for their 2022 release, L'Ecole De La Caz, and was a finalist in the category of Avant Garde/ Experimental Artist of the Year for Music Victoria 2021. In 2022, Aarti also released their first public artwork, EMBODIMENTS with Test Sites Phase 2 / ACCA's 'Who's Afraid of Public Space?' 2022, commissioned by the City of Melbourne.
Aarti performs in various ensembles, solo and collaboratively and is the Director of the experimental art initiative Tincture. They are one of four vocalists in the Khyaal Vocal Ensemble, a group that explores imaginings stemming from the intuitive expression of the naked voice.
Photograph: Chloe Sobejko
Inbal Nissim
13 March ––1 June 2024
Inbal Nissim (Naarm/Melbourne) is a painter driven by the intuitive. Her work deals with the connection between the inner landscapes of the mind and the material, exploring the manifestation of the subconscious. In her paintings, principally ink on paper and loose fabrics, she creates a fictional atmospheric presence, often on the spectrum between esoteric figuration and an ethereal abstract essence.
Inbal has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Australia, Israel and Germany and is represented in public and private collections domestically and abroad. In 2021, she was the recipient of the City of Melbourne Arts Grant for her interactive online project ‘Regards From Your Future’, which she hosted at the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair live events (2022).
At the end of 2023, Inbal undertook a residency with DESA residency space in Bali, Indonesia, where she began to lay the foundations for works she will explore further and show at CORRESPONDENCES.
Inbal holds a Master of Fine Art and Bachelor of Fine Art from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design Jerusalem, from which she graduated with Honours and received several awards, including the Mitchell Presser Prize for Excellence in Painting.
Photograph: Madz Rehorek
Javad Kashani
13 March ––1 June 2024
Javad (Jodi) Kashani (Naarm/Melbourne) is a multidisciplinary artist and academic researcher who makes mixed-media works on paper informed by a profound and abiding passion for literature. Incorporating poetic text and tender pictorial elements, both figurative and abstract, Javad uses their visual language, research and lived experience to explore the theme of gender and the wider human condition. For
سخن دل Sokhaneh del, Javad continues their ongoing search into gender and the self to engage deeply with the theme of devotion, drawing inspiration from the poetry of classical Persian poet Maulana/Rumi. The exhibition سخن دل Sokhaneh del will be the first time that Javad has presented their visual artwork to audiences.
They hold a Bachelor of Science in Arts and Cultural Management from the University of Science & Culture in Iran. They are in the final stages of completing a Master of Arts and Cultural Management with the University of Melbourne, where their minor thesis focuses on Gender Inclusivity in the Australian Arts context.
Photograph: Dion Van de Kamp
Emma Ovenden
25 January ––7 March 2024 - Duo
Emma Ovenden is a composer/musician known for her melancholy, unconventional beats. She pushes the creative envelope with a computer-less setup, producing highly crafted and moving works of song with synths, voice and a restricted palette of beats. She grew up playing traditional collected folk music in her family of origin, cementing a deep, natural relationship to harmony and learning by ear. After completing a contemporary music degree in Vocal Performance, Emma's practice brought songwriting to the forefront. A prolific maker of music and visual artwork, Emma has played in the Naarm (Melbourne) underground scene since 2014.
Photo credit: Will Hamilton Coates
Elyss McCleary
25 January ––7 March 2024 - Duo
Elyss McCleary’s (Naarm/Melbourne) practice explores forms found in layers of spaces, shapes, and colours that shift between representation and abstraction. Working predominantly in oil paint, her compositional placement rhythms are both a reflection and response to environments. She creates portals of imagined spaces mixed with cinematic backgrounds of the everyday that are fused with memory and observation, interrupted by ‘cameo’ appearances of significant urban structures. Elyss has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions since 2007. Her work is held in the Artbank, the Deakin University Art Collection, and significant collections in Australia and Serbia. Elyss holds a Master in Contemporary Art from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2016). She is represented by the Nicholas Thompson Gallery.
Photo credit: Elyss McCleary
Ouyang Yu
6 September —2 December 2023 - Duo
Ouyang Yu is a Naarm (Melbourne)-based poet, novelist, literary scholar and translator. Over his decades-long writing career, he has published prolifically in both English and Chinese—including the award-winning novel The English Class (2010). His more recent works include the novel Billy Sing (2017) and the poetry collection Flag of Permanent Defeat (2019). He is the recipient of the 2022 Australia Council Fellowship for Literature, the awarding of which has allowed him to focus on his new documentary novel. Ouyang will be collaborating with artist Jessye Wdowin-McGregor as part of our inaugural duo residency.
Credit: Echo Cai
Jessye Wdowin-McGregor
6 September —2 December 2023 - Duo
Jessye Wdowin-McGregor is a Naarm (Melbourne)-based artist whose practice spans video, performance, photography, drawing, and collage. A relationship to place underpins much of her work, and she is inspired by environments that are sometimes at the periphery of attention, particularly within the urban realm. She is interested in our entanglements with other species, the thresholds between body and landscape, the human impact on the natural world, spontaneous forms of urban nature, and the elemental infrastructures that shape our surroundings. Jessye will be collaborating with artist /poet Ouyang Yu as part of our inaugural duo residency.
Credit: Jessye Wdowin-McGregor
Ruby Brown
9 June —-2 September 2023
Ruby Brown was born in Ōtepoti, Aotearoa and is of Scottish and Ngā Puhi descent. She lives on Wurundjeri country in Naarm (Melbourne), where she attended the Victorian College of the Arts in 2014. Using found objects and re-purposed materials, her practice considers sensory experience, connection and disconnection, creation traditions, painting, sculpture and meditative action.
Credit: © Ruby Brown
Yoko Ozawa
3 March —-3 June 2023
Japan-born, Naarm (Melbourne)-based artist Yoko Ozawa has been making ceramics since 2003, when her graphic design and Japanese painting studies led her into pottery. Her multidisciplinary practice is informed by a lifelong interest in natural phenomena - seasonal transitions, fog, breeze, rain, light and shadow – the atmosphere between objects and their surroundings (包まれる tsutsumareru) and the Japanese notion of よはくyohaku (blank space).
Credit: © Yoko Ozawa
Genevieve Fry with Jessye Wdowin-McGregor
2 —-26 February 2023
Genevieve Fry is a multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Naarm (Melbourne). She is interested in exploratory music, drawing inspiration from the natural world, and encouraging an inward journey touching on deep time, memory and sense of place/ self. Genevieve is the co-founder of Eastmint artist-run studios, label and performance space which focuses on presenting and supporting music that promotes deep listening from a diverse range of artists across all genres.
Photograph by Peter Cahill
Ali McCann
6 September —26 November 2022
Ali McCann (Naarm/Melbourne) is a multi-disciplinary artist well-known for still-life photographs and sculptures. Her work is informed by outmoded photography guides, amateur artworks, and the decor of educational and domestic spaces of the 1970s and 1980s. Working across photography, sculpture, video and performance, her compositions examine the illusionary tendencies of the photographic image and the aesthetics of education, nostalgia and memory.
Credit: © Ali McCann
Edwina Stevens
3 June —-27 August 2022
Edwina Stevens (Otepoti/Aotearoa, Naarm / Melbourne) is an audiovisual artist working across composition, live performance and installation, focusing on sound recordings, synthesized sound, found acoustic elements/instruments and obsolete tech. A self-taught musician, she takes an improvised approach to music and sound design influenced by her involvement in the Aotearoa experimental noise scene. Her work investigates audiovisual processes of engaging with places that are improvisational, collaborative and incidental. Her practice explores the entanglements of the temporal, material and experiential through chance encounters, tangential processes and unanticipated outcomes.
Credit: © Edwina Stevens
