Holding Light: Artist Talk

Asher Abergel is a designer and maker whose practice sits between functional design and art.

Working primarily with wood and ceramic, Abergel explores how material, form and subtle gestures can evoke memory, presence and human connection. The material often leads the process, with texture, weight and behaviour guiding how each piece develops. His works commonly begin as everyday objects, then move beyond utility to become pieces that invite reflection and emotional engagement.

www.dezionstudio.com

D-Mo is a visual storyteller whose work explores identity, migration, memory and survival through restrained, psychologically-charged imagery. Her practice examines how individuals inhabit space after rupture, and how subtle shifts in perception alter meaning.

Born of Polish heritage and grounded in the Australian landscape, she has cultivated a body of work that bridges personal history with collective experience. Working across portraiture, conceptual photography, installation, and mixed media, she employs pared-back environments and precise spatial gestures to explore presence, absence, and symbolic elevation. Over two decades, D-Mo has established an internationally-recognised career. She is the recipient of the Olive Cotton Award (2021).

d-mo.info

Ella Dreyfus is an award-winning visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally. Alongside a distinguished 40-year academic career, she serves as Head of Public Programs at the National Art School. Her practice centres on an aesthetics of intimacy, foregrounding the relationship between subject, artist, and viewer. Her recent still-life works document the afterlife of the Bondi memorial flowers, where beauty and decay coexist as vessels of grief and memory. Working with dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, she creates images of sculptural depth and psychological intensity.

www.elladreyfus.com

Paul Blackmore is an Australian photographer whose work sits at the intersection of documentary practice and fine art, with a focus on people, place and cultural identity. Working across portraiture, landscape and long-form photographic essays, Blackmore’s projects engage deeply with social and environmental narratives, often developed over extended periods.

Blackmore’s award-winning work has been exhibited widely in Australia, Europe and the United States, and his photographs have been published in international magazines. He lives and works in Australia, continuing a practice shaped by curiosity, endurance and a slightly stubborn belief that photographs can still tell important stories.

https://www.paulblackmore.com/

Sue Saxon is an award-winning artist and educator whose practice interrogates visual culture, antisemitic imagery and the ethics of representation. Her major works, including Stereotype/Other, Ultima and Other to Me, critically examine how hatred is visually produced, sustained and transmitted, and the consequences that follow. Saxon and Becker’s sustained and productive collaboration began with the intricate, labour-intensive process of hand-piercing eggshells, and developed further during Saxon’s 2012 Waverley Artist in Residence, culminating in The Bondi Twitch – A Field Guide to the Noses of the Waverley District. This project, deeply grounded in local community engagement, explored the historic and contemporary demographic fabric of the Waverley community through the lens and language of birdwatching.

https://sue-saxon.com/

Jane Becker’s award-winning practice engages with queer and Jewish identity through history, memory, language and material culture through finely wrought, research-driven processes. Her work balances intimacy with critical reflection, often incorporating text, drawing and archival material. Becker is currently developing RETURNING, a hybrid graphic memoir that combines historical and genealogical research to trace a family decimated by the Holocaust, reckoning with displacement, injustice and the enduring presence of the past.

https://janebecker.com.au/

Chris is an award-winning Australian arts leader, director, programmer and playwright. He is currently Artistic Director of the iconic Bondi Pavilion, curating a diverse program of year-round arts and culture cross-artform events. He was Director & CEO of Critical Stages Touring from 2014-2022, curating annual programs of outstanding professional live performance for regional and metropolitan audiences across Australia and New Zealand (2014- present). Previous roles include Guest Curator of the 2013 National Play Festival for Playwriting Australia; Artistic Director & CEO of Deckchair Theatre in Fremantle WA; Artistic Director of Theatre @ Risk in Melbourne; & Resident Director at Melbourne Theatre Company.