SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY 2025

Zac Langdon-Pole’s practice is situated across varying magnitudes of time. His work contests the historical accounts and myths attributed to the origins of personal and cultural objects by subjecting them to alchemic, human and natural processes. His works are physical manifestations of personal histories converging with larger social developments and collective legacies.

Adam Lee’s drawing practice ties together narratives of memory, imagination and transcendence. Through his works, Lee builds worlds where allegory and atmosphere coalesce to suggest a highly personal outlook informed by collective folklore and legend. His work references a wide range of sources including historical and family photographs, spiritual narratives, natural history, and literature to investigate aspects of the human. These explorations find their physical manifestation in Lee’s moody landscapes and a contemporary take on tenebrism

Through her research into the role of the ‘artist-shaman’ in contemporary ecologies, Clare Milledge explores how magic and the occult can be used to re-evaluate Westernised relationships to non-human forms, such as animals, nature and language. Familiar themes include shamanistic ritual and an iconography of moons, witching rods, sprites and apparitions – indexed in hinterglasmalarei, a technique used by Byzantine painters involving the application of oil paint on the reverse side of glass.

By traversing art, myth, and materiality, this presentation challenges audiences to consider what other modes of seeing, knowing, and being might be possible.