Through her artist abstractions, Crystal Wu explores one of the more complex and elusive human emotions, the sensation known as love. Wishing to communicate more than a general impression of love, however, she is interested in dissecting the specific aspects and varieties of that changeable feeling. For instance, the portrayal of love’s courage, as exemplified in the works of the Russian French artist Marc Chagall, is one such point of inspiration. In contrast, the comforting aspect of familial intimacy as seen in Paul Gaugin’s painting ‘The Two Sisters’ provides another point of departure. Wu is a keen traveller, and many of her works are inspired and based on places that she has been to. She also believes that this is a love for nature from her memory. Ultimately, Wu strives to create a warmth of feeling in her paintings, a mood that is easily connected to love in all its dimensions.

Crystal Wu was born in Shanghai, China and moved to Melbourne in 2018, she worked in fashion production for more than 20 years, and has her own business in Shanghai. Since moving to Melbourne, Wu has devoted a lot of time to art and paintings. There is a warmth of feeling in her works, one moreover that is easily connected to love in all its dimensions, she said “I feel countless moments of love and being loved in my life, and these intangible feelings turn into a force that drives me to use colours and brushes to express myself freely”. In 2023, her two works both named “Untitled” were selected for exhibition at TWHA WHIF in Los Angeles. Then in 2024, her work “Exit” was again selected for a showcase at ANKHART in Paris. She had her solo painting exhibition in December 2024 at the ACAE gallery. 

The artworks John Renkin has selected for this exhibition feature landscapes from South Australia and Victoria. They are views of clusters of scattered trees in fields of open grassland often on a rise. He was drawn to these landscapes as they offered potential for compositions that could be explored from different views, at different times of the day and during different seasons throughout the year. These compositions explore the ways in which colour, tone, and structure create balance and contrast. Features like trees appear simplified but with enough variation to add movement and breakup masses. All artworks have been produced using oil paint on wood panels. They have been completed in a single session, observing directly from life on location. This method enables Renkin to capture the immediacy of his response to the landscape.

Renkin has been drawing and painting from an early age. He pursued an art education as an adult at various CAE drawing classes and studied still life, figure, and landscape painting with David Moore. Renkin enjoys spending time outside in the natural environment. He has spent time travelling throughout regional Australia and has had various painting excursions in the Northern Territory, South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania. Renkin has been involved with numerous group and solo exhibitions and has been a finalist in self portrait and landscape exhibitions at the Castlemaine Art Museum.

Architecture, like many disciplines shaped by Enlightenment rationality, operates within rigid binary oppositions—up and down, interior and exterior, solid and void. These self-referential constructs limit architecture’s ability to fully engage with complex spatial interdependencies. Bound by conventional representation methods like planes, sections, and elevations, architecture struggles to address the fluid, polyvalent nature of contemporary space.

Painting, as a two-dimensional medium, has long pursued spatial depth, while architecture, paradoxically, reduces its own spatiality to lines on paper. By merging the two fields, a new mode of architectural expression emerges—one that is sentimental, ambiguous, and immersive. This series of paintings serves as an alternative architectural medium, existing simultaneously as architectural drawings and tangible, emotive objects. They oscillate between space and representation, challenging architecture’s rigid dualities by embracing idiosyncrasy, atmosphere, and spatial interference.

Evan Cooper's current exhibition focuses on multiple-exposure photography. He also tries to find ways to present the work differently to standard printed photography. His "Echoes and Whispers" exhibition was exhibited after being printed on georgette so that it was sheer and able to move with the air currents of the room. The images were also printed 1.4 x 1.8 metres in size so that the images could fill a large portion of a person's vision. His "Smile" exhibition was printed on velvet, inviting a sensory experience with the artwork. While he uses digital photography in these multiple exposure works, he also explores analogue processes such as printing and hand-colouring.  Cooper likes to use older techniques to introduce them in a contemporary context.

“Cafuné” is a word of Brazilian Portuguese origin, meaning to gently run your fingers through someone's hair. While society has lost many of the restrictive views of sex between consenting adults, sometimes we have lost the ability to find simple affection between people we care about. Physical contact has been shown to have healing qualities. In hospitals there are programs called "cuddle mums", where people (they don't have to be women)  hold or cuddle premature babies, if their own family are unable to. Human contact can help a newborn thrive in a way that simple medical intervention and care cannot. 

In most cities there are clubs or locations that can easily facilitate sexual activity, but the same cannot be said for finding a person to give you a hug when you need it.  There are apps where you can connect with someone to have a casual encounter, but none exist that help you to connect with a person to snuggle on the couch, eating popcorn and binge watching. These works explore the healing power of affection and the importance of physical contact with no hidden agenda - other than to let people know that they are important just as they are.

Evan Cooper was introduced to photography in high school in the 80s. He was planning on making it a career, but after a family medical emergency changed his path it became a hobby.  And in many ways he is glad that it did. His photography projects are solely about what he wants to explore and present to the world. It is also a way of blocking out the stresses of modern life and focuses on something creative.

Join us for Linda Marie artist talk at Red Gallery, 24 May at 1pm.

Working across painting, drawing and installation, Linda (Naarm/Melbourne) traces the emotional rhythms of landscape both vast and internal.

Somatic interiors began with the idea that the human body responds to and holds lived experience in a very different way to the conscious mind. Accessing that knowledge creates an avenue for alternative expression and the opportunity to establish a deeper connection with the viewer.

Linda Marie (Naarm/Melbourne) works across painting, drawing and installation. Her art practice reflects her longstanding interest in the physical and emotional experience of being in big landscapes above and below the water, and the inevitable disconnect that arises when attempting to communicate sensory experience to another. She has exhibited in solo and group shows since 2017.

Linda Marie @linda.marie.art