Underneath, Payne’s Hosts (2025) is found scattered across the floor like confetti, petals, debris. His communion wafers speak to both the sacred and the surplus. They are ritual without solemnity. Eucharist becomes a choreography of desire and erasure — enacting the intimacy ofconsumption and the brutality of devotion.
Like a slit across the back wall Joyce’s Volitans (2025) draws a breath into the winded room like an air vent or a vacuum. Magnetised, the laced twin axes reach and repel simultaneously. Like wings caught mid beat, or her breath on the roof. In the slipstream, the triptych hovers, puncturing the room’s air pressure —like an intake before speech.
Documentation by Claudia Saballa-Hobbs
Clara Joyce’s practice explores painting as a speculative medium to consider the relations between the seen and felt. Paintings are treated as a site of inquiry, holding space for a delicate ambiguity that resists capture. Techniques of stain painting and layering are key to her process generating complex material accumulations.
Marcus Payne’s practice explores online depictions of masculinity through an examination of his own memories and cultural identity. He explores the commodification of stoic ideals within motivational media in an attempt to expose the absurdity of relentless cycles of productivity and self-surveillance. His practice aims to unveil the voices that perpetuate these ideals.
Eli Flavell lives and works in Naarm Melbourne and is a student at the VCA. Spanning sculpture, mixed-media and olfactory installation, his work explores the function of materials and the tensions that may arise when they are pushed.