2025
The Gathering
Antique Decorative Art
12 Macleay St. Potts Point, Sydney
Exhibition 1st - 8th November
Opening Saturday 1st November
4.30 - 8.00 pm
My bird paintings & sculptures with
Gary Heary Bird Photographer &
Samantha Tidbeck bird painter
Gallery Hours 10.30 - 5.30 pm
Tuesday- Sunday
Art Statement
Sydney based artist Gabrielle Courtney’s new exhibition, The Gathering, is the crux of a four decade long artistic practice. A practice that has evolved to be in tune with Courtenay’s environment, translating the energies of her surroundings into sculpture and painting. Spiritual and physical universes meet—an exploration of the interconnectedness of nature and humanity.
Somewhat of a Flâneuse, Courtenay spends her days wandering the coastline and parks close to her home in Bronte, and the more industrial streets of Alexandria. Found objects and inspired natural forms are collected and amassed until they find a new home in her work; the reclamation of found materials is pivotal to the artist’s practice. Courtenay has an incredible talent for seeing the unseen. A twisted vine or a curved sliver of bark becomes the wing eagle, a twisted knot of wood is an eye; reminding us that the landscape is not inert but sentient.
A recurring motif in The Gathering is the eye—a symbol charged with layered meanings across cultures. Traditionally associated with protection, connection, and insight, the eye becomes a conduit between the seen and unseen. In Courtenay’s hands, the eye becomes a metaphor for the earth’s own consciousness. Her sculptures and paintings suggest that the natural world does not sit passively before us but actively watches, responds, and remembers. In the presence of the works, one can’t help but feel watched.
As we look through the work in her Alexandria studio, Courtenay and I discuss the concept of nature’s eye. For Courtenay, nature’s eye is a portal—an opening that connects human perception with the vitality of the environment. Natures eye is featured across painting and sculpture alike. In Shapeshifter, 2025, an eye protrudes the painted organic form; and in Osprey Sunrise, 2024, where the bird’s eyes stop you in your tracks, gaze piercing the canvas as the viewer remains frozen. Also in Metamorphosis, 2024, a black cockatoo rises out of a piece of reclaimed charred timber, with eyes that follow you around the room, demanding answers for their habitats that have been stolen and destroyed by humanity. The concept of nature’s eye is particularly potent in Sighted #2, 2025, a work that utilises a found and repurposed object with the sculptural elements of a tree and forty-eight tiny mirrors. Mirrors that reflect the eyes of the viewer from all angles, while two black crows stare back. A confronting work that serves as a stark reminder of the dwindling bird population in Australia.
The namesake works of the exhibition, The Gathering, are three soaring bird sculptures—Prophesy, Limboland, and Night Calls, 2024. Each made using large offcuts of single use polystyrene, found in the parking lot of her studio, the discarded materials are given a new life. Courtenay draws her audience’s attention to the destructive cycle of over consumption. Creation without depletion, renewal without erasure. Prophesy, depicting a wedge-tail eagle, was the first of the trio to be realised. Courtenay recalls a 2007 sighting of a wedgetail eagle gliding over her on a trip to the desert and was instantly taken back to that moment when she saw an eye, like that of the wedgetail, emerge in forgotten polystyrene. In Limboland a black crow sits atop a high-rise building, gazing down at her young as the chick tries to eat a necklace. This is the reality that so much of our wildlife faces, forests and bushland become concrete jungles where they are forced to scavenge amongst our waste for food. An owl makes up the last of the trio in Night Calls, with eyes that stare upwards to the sky, hopeful for a better future. The Gathering is a reminder that the earth holds a gaze as potent as our own.
By Imogen Cheuge Arts Writer & Curator 2025
Please note: All images of my Bird Paintings & Photographs will be added to my website for perusal later Wednesday 29 October
My 2025 Artist Residency at The Greenhills Art Centre WA
About Green Hills
Across the road from the Old Pub the no longer used rail line was once busy transporting the local wheat crops to Perth. Visitors from Perth and local towns would come to stay on weekends for fairs and horse races.
The Old Pub was still operating in 1990 when the two new American owners renovated the Old Pub with great style. They enhanced its history and beauty with finely framed paintings, antiques and furniture. A large shed was also built at the back of the Old Pub.
The Greenhills Art Centre 2025 Artist in Residence
Johanna and Greg Larkins renovated the shed and it became a large light filled studio space attached to the building with room for 10 artists with easels, tables and printing equipment, providing a productive and collaborative space to create work day or night.Johanna Larkins is a Dutch artist of renown trained in Holland and Florence in classical still life painting. She and her partner Greg run the Green Hills Art Centre and a framing business for local and Perth based artists. The small township of Greenhills is situated in farming country close to York the oldest colonial settlement in Western Australia located 2.5 hours from Perth.
First Artist in Residence – Green Hills Art Centre 2025
I was very lucky to be offered the opportunity by Johanna and Greg Larkinsto become the first Artist in Residence at The Greenhills Arts Centre, Greenhills in Western Australia in August 2025. The kindness and generosity shown by Johanna and Greg to myself and fellow artists made it an unforgettable artist in residency experience.
Just as in past residencies in Australia and China, having a creative space outside of my Sydney based studio and practice supports a period of intense contemplation and creativity without the distractions of everyday life. My residency was enhanced by the artistic dialogue that flowed with fellow artists who arrived over my three week stay. A fellow artist from Argentina, Mapi De Aubeyzon shared by daily walks and we had some interesting conversations walking in that flat landscape that was so different for both of us.
Drawing inspiration from the surrounding landscape, capturing the sunrise and sunsets through the tree filled with birds; walking morning and late afternoon documenting the majestic white fecund gum trees lining the sides of the dirt and sealed roads, as the chorus of galahs, parrots, native minors and crows filled the sky and the trees.
My small painted studies of birds will be shown with my bird sculptures and paintings in my upcoming exhibition The Gathering, 1-8 November 2025 at Antique Decorative Art, 12 Macleay Street Potts Point, Sydney.
