Window // 10 Mar – 17 Mar 2025.
Scrying in Oil Spills, 2023
Jessie Turner
10 Mar - 17 Mar 2025
Scrying in Oil Spills connects the notions of ‘nature’ and ‘reflection’ through historical contexts and speculative futures–Investigating a number of environmental issues through reflective materialities, including renewable energy and the debate between nuclear and solar, the melting of Antarctica, oil spills and burning toxic waste.
Looking at the history of glass and mirrors, from using them to see the future, to their implications of vanity, Jessie Turner bends and captures light in solid yet transient objects; photographs, and glass itself. Here, light and reflection become sentient beings that flit and dance across the surface of the mind and the world around us. By depicting ecological pasts and futures through reflection, the interactions and hybridisations of these materialities in Scrying in Oil Spills demonstrate the inherent interweaving of the natural and the human-made.
Artist Bio: Jessie Turner (she/her) investigates speculative futures through photography and sculpture, focusing on the intertwining of the future and past, to create a layered time that positions the natural world as an all-consuming, ever present entity with sentience far outweighing our own. By investigating specific moments in history and their relevance to contemporary and future times, Jessie’s works evoke a fantasized melding of time and place to create hallucinogenic worlds. She graduated from Honours at the Victorian College of the Arts and has shown at Museum of Australian Photography, George Paton Gallery, and Centre for Contemporary Photography.
@jessieturnerphotography
Window // 1 Mar – 9 Mar 2025.
Emma Salmon, Woodchip, Restrung, 2025, Plywood sheets, plywood string, rust pigment on paper, graphite. Installation view, dimensions variable.
Woodchip, Restrung, 2025
Emma Salmon
1 Mar - 9 Mar 2025
I was working on the set for Maryanne Sam's (Torres Strait Islander) Oh My God I'm Blak! production at La Mama when I noticed that the plywood I was stripping from one of the set pieces was splitting at the edges into fibre. Having recently worked with Isobel Morphy-Walsh (Taun Wurrung) and Stone Turner (Arrente) to construct an emu feather skirt for Phoebe Grainer's Emu In The Sun, I learnt about traditions of using stringybark to weave and make string, and worked with these fibres. I saw a parallel here in my materials for these two plays. These plywood panels document my process of stripping and harvesting string from them, weaving within the gaps made. I'm a Nyikina woman who grew up away from Country, only going up to the Kimberley last year. All of my life I have lived on Wurundjeri land in Fawkner, in built landscapes where asphalt has paved over rivers and weatherboard houses stand where trees would have. I don't know how to harvest from stringybark yet, but I can connect to this practice through reclaiming the materials that surround me. After all, everything is string when you go far back enough - which as demonstrated here, is not far at all. I wish to thank the artists mentioned for their knowledge and generosity and acknowledge their continuums of ancestral practice, including most pertinently weaving, stringmaking and fibre harvesting.
Artist Bio: Emma Salmon (she/her) is a Nyikina and Celtic artist born and based in Naarm's northern suburbs on Wurundjeri land. Her practice spans stringmaking and weaving, set and costume, installations, comics and video. She is guided by intuition, honesty and Country. She tells stories of her ancestry, family and communities, and their unbroken connection, memory and spirit. She has exhibited with Trocadero Projects and Koorie Heritage Trust and was a set and costume assistant on Blak In The Room (ILBIJERRI x Melbourne Theatre Company 2024) and Scar Trees (ILBIJERRI 2024) and was the scenic artist for The Whisper (Brodie Murray) and Oh My God I'm Blak! (Maryanne Sam). She is currently completing a BFA in Drawing and Printmaking at VCA.
@pussbah
Shop // 17 Feb – 27 Feb 2025.
Residual Sanctum, 2024
Joanna van der Linden
17 Feb - 27 Feb 2025
Residual Sanctum delves into the materialities and unstable surfaces of embodiment and body representation. This exhibition engages with the symbology of corporeal demarcation, exploring surface, image-making, and materiality through etching, metalwork and latex. The works disrupt and repurpose the language of Catholic iconography, using metal etching and sculpture to challenge the traditional representations of the body and wholeness. Repetition serves as a tool for abstraction and meditation, transforming classical figures into forms that simultaneously distort and pay homage to the body, which is both pierced and encased within steel. The classic iconography of punishment, body horror, pain, and grief is refracted, reflected and embodied, generating a multiplicity of material languages and symbologies, in which the figure takes shape, refracts and dissolves.
Artist Bio: Johanna van der Linden (she/her) is an artist living and working on unceded Wurundjeri country. Her practice spans print making, metalwork, and sculpture, where she reinterprets traditional iconography through a contemporary lens. Johanna explores themes of embodiment, materiality, and the intersections between the body and the material world, engaging with feminist materialisms to examine the relationships between physicality and symbolism. Her exhibitions have included solo and group shows across Melbourne, such as Seventh Gallery, Blindside, and Rubicon. In 2024, she was recognized as a finalist for the William Blake Prize. Johanna holds an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Canterbury, Aotearoa, and an Honours degree in Fine Arts from RMIT.
Room Sheet with exhibition text by Lillian Phillips
Pictured Left: Johanna van der Linden, Residual Sanctum, 2024, Soft steel, etching, latex, bronze. Installation view, dimensions variable. Documentation by Bonnie Thorn.
Window // 6 Feb – 12 Feb 2025.
Ceausescu’s Freak F(l)ag, 2024
Stefa Panoschi
6 Feb - 12 Feb 2025
Stefa Panoschi’s Ceausescu’s Freak F(l)ag (2024) reimagines Romania’s revolutionary flag, omitting the socialist crest in a deliberate gesture of abstraction. The work references the Romanian Revolution of 1989, a pivotal moment that led to the fall of the communist regime and which, in the broader context, catalysed the emigration of Panoschi’s parents to Australia c. 1999. Ceausescu’s Freak F(l)ag investigates Panoschi’s upbringing in a post-communist family, exploring the tension between a Western, individualistic identity shaped by capitalist society and the lingering influence of communist ideals.
The flag, as a charged symbol of nationalism, is layered with meaning in this work. It not only evokes the nationalist sentiments of right-wing politics but also critiques the symbiotic relationship between the state and the Orthodox Christian Church, both of which have historically supported and reinforced authoritarian ideologies in Romania. Panoschi subverts this authoritarian symbol by incorporating elements from kink culture, most notably the hole in the flag designed to align with pelvic height, suggesting the image of a glory hole. This provocative element invites a complex reading of power dynamics, sexuality, and subversion.
The crucifix-shaped bracket that secures the flag to the wooden plinth further deepens the symbolic resonance of the work. This reference to Christ’s stigmata suggests the intertwining of religious martyrdom with political martyrdom, particularly in the context of Nicolae Ceaușescu, who remains a contentious figure in Romania, revered by some as a martyr following his execution in 1989. The flag’s suspension via a spear-shaped implement additionally evokes the figure of Vlad the Impaler, another Romanian leader who, like Ceaușescu, fled insurrection and met a violent death. Both figures, though from different historical contexts, are linked by their authoritarian rule, their violent ends, and their lasting legacies in Romanian national identity.
Ceaușescu’s Freak F(l)ag serves as a critical exploration of identity politics, the fetishisation and martyrdom of ruthless leaders, and the enduring influence of nationalist ideologies in contemporary society. Even in nations such as Australia, which promises utopian economic and social models, the work underscores the ways in which systems of exploitation persist and continue to shape the lives of the masses.
Artist Bio: Stefa Panoschi (b. 2000, she/her) is an emerging artist working in Naarm/Melbourne. Stefa has spent the last few years queering the limits of cultural identity, religious nationalism and home. Stefa is interested in the conflicts/ contradictions and problematics of an “East-West” life. Stefa works from a personal and familial history.
@jim_from_moldova
panoschistefan@gmail.com
138 Gallery acknowledges that we are living and working on the unceded sovereign land of the Wurundjeri and Woi-Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and future, and recognise the enduring history of the creative and spiritual practices of Aboriginal and First Nations peoples throughout the country.
138
About
138 Gallery has been in operation since 2021 as a dynamic space for the exploration and celebration of public art. Situated in the heart of Brunswick East, on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri and Woi-Wurrung peoples, we are dedicated to providing an inclusive and accessible environment that attempts to dissolve traditional boundaries for emerging artists.
Operations
Director: Victoria Mathison
Shop Gallery Manager: Clement Lazzaro
Window Gallery Manager: Uma Christensen
Board Members
Kyle McIntyre, Henry Mathison, Lillian Phillips
Volunteers
Adele Foster, Aletta De Jong, Amelia McKay, Andrea Garcia, Beatrix Starlime Brenneman, Charlotte Wik, Erin Ginty, Fiona Shewan, Gina Corridore, Harriet Wiström Sjöqvist, Lola Rae, Lucy Apfel, Ruby Neal, Sean Martin, Stefa Panoschi, Stephanie Samartzis, Tallulah Papaellinas, Tom Stoddard & Zoé Gazeau-Rousseau-Ganet
Contact
For general inquiries, please contact
138gallery@gmail.com