Georgia Spain lives and works in Sandford Tasmania. Since her first solo exhibition with the Egg & Dart in April 2020, (Beginning in Blue) Left in Red, the response has been overwhelming. In September 2020 she was awarded the winner of The Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship and featured in The Egg & Dart’s online presentation for Sydney Contemporary 2020. In Spain’s paintings, physical connection is explored through bodies in groupings. Each work touches on an instinctual engagement between people in crisis or communion.

Please click here for the online exhibition catalogue

With an instinctive meshing together of material and feel, Mark Merrikin’s paintings capture everyday connections between friends and family. This might feel like a well-trod path, but there is an unusual tenderness and direct gesture in the work. Figures feel lovingly embraced by a wild meshing of patterns and shifting surfaces. A colour link to the Fauvist modernists is there but then knocked back by accretions of cement and spray paint. Built up grainy areas bring the outside in to these images, landing the work in an urban present.

Mark Merrikin is an emerging artist from Woolgoolga on the NSW mid-north coast. He is now based in Port Kembla, having graduated from the University of Wollongong. The Egg & Dart is excited to present the artist’s first show at the gallery. Click here to read more and to view the exhibition catalogue…