the secret garden

29 October – 8 November 2026
Opening: 6 – 8pm, Thursday 29 October 2026

Julie Podstolski, Robyn Varpins and Anne McCaughey share a delight in the natural world and an interest in close enquiry. Each brings their own way of seeing, in drawing, sculpture and painting. Together, their most recent work reveals the secret garden.

Podstolski’s exquisite renderings of birdlife, mostly sourced from her dedicated trips to Araluen, have often been compared to photographs, but they are so much more than that. Delicate and luminous, the marks made through decades of skill in handling colour pencil make small jewels of visual experience, with a play of light, focus and composition from a masterful hand.

Varpins’ glorious figures and foliage are rich with glowing colour and tender-faced interaction with Mother Earth. They interpret the secret garden as we wish it could be: immersive and contemplative. These hand-built ceramic forms bring peace and tranquillity to the eye and heart of the viewer, making it a sublime experience.

McCaughey has wandered from her usual wide views of Australian land and sea into the tangled world of the gardener’s enemy: weeds. Wild grasses and weeding implements form the backbone of her oils, in lustrous ochres and earth tones. She invites us to rethink what we call a pest, through the singular grace and variety of these curving, interlaced shapes.