Artist:
Kevin Thorley
This work echoes the spirit of Paul Gauguin’s radical mentorship in 1888, when he urged Paul Sérusier to abandon realism and paint with pure emotion—resulting in The Talisman, a small landscape painted on the lid of a cigar box. That humble object became a catalyst for the Symbolist movement Les Nabis, transforming the cigar box into a vessel of artistic revolution. Reimagining this legacy through found materials, inviting us to consider the overlooked and discarded as sites of transformation. Just as Gauguin’s challenge turned a cigar box into a manifesto, Thorley’s assemblage asks: When we interpret with soul, not sight—what do we truly see?
Acknowledgment of traditional owners.
We would like to pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land on which our building stands, their leaders, past, present and emerging.