Imprint | Nathalie Anne
29 Apr 2026 – 10 May 2026
Thursday 30 April, 6pm
Location: Frater Gallery
Nathalie Anne's work explores what endures when materials meet, transform, and leave their traces. Working with graphite, watercolour and wood, she engages with substances that carry their own histories of fragmentation and permanence.
Graphite is a layered mineral that marks through deliberate erosion. With each stroke, shards of carbon atoms cleave away into tiny fragments, embedding themselves in the grain of the wooden surface. The act of drawing becomes an act of breaking down and building up simultaneously - particles pressed permanently into the wood's cellular structure, lodged in its memory even as subsequent layers are applied.
Water transforms but never truly leaves. After it evaporates, what remains is the stain, the raised grain, the ghost of its movement across the surface. The wood bears witness to water's passage, permanently altered by contact.
Wood itself is an archive - growth rings marking time, seasons, stress. By adding human marks to this natural record, the artist create new strata of meaning. Her underdrawings remain visible not just aesthetically but materially - graphite fragments nestled into the wood's existing history, becoming part of its layered structure.
What remains of a presence? Just as graphite must fragment to make its mark, we too leave traces through our own giving away - the parts of ourselves that become memory for others, the echoes that persist after we leave the room. Nathalie Anne's process mirrors the human experience of impermanence and permanence coexisting. Beneath every finished surface lie the ghosts of earlier attempts, earlier selves - never fully erased, continuing to inform what emerges.
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.