28 May—18 June
Skin & Story brings together eight leading contemporary artists:
- Israel Tangaroa Birch
- Lottie Consalvo
- Mbali Dhlamini
- Robert Jahnke
- Anton Forde
- Neil Ieremia
- Monica Rani Rudhar
- Timo Kube
There is a phrase from ancient scripture, tikkun olam, that means “to repair the world.”
It doesn’t call for sweeping salvation or perfect answers. Instead, it offers something enduring: an invitation to notice what is broken, to hold it with care, and to begin again. Repair starts not in grand gestures but in the smallest acts of attention—how we see, how we listen, and how we choose to respond.
In this presentation, the surface becomes both skin and story. A place to begin, and a threshold to imagined futures. In the language of art criticism, “surface” is sometimes used dismissively, a shorthand for style without substance. But these artists reclaim it as a site of transformation, inheritance, and knowing. Through reflection, compression, ornament, and illusion, they invite us to consider a different way of seeing. What might the world look like if we treated its surfaces with more care? What if what glimmers is not mere decoration, but a kind of evidence?
Together, these artists offer a collective proposition: that repair begins by looking into what glitters. By holding contradiction — fragility and strength, humour and sorrow, permanence and flux — all at once.
Their works are invitations to move slower. To attend more generously to see surface as a threshold and the place where things begin to change.
Featured artwork: ‘Earrings My Ancestors Wore’ by Monica Rani Rudhar
