GALLERY ONE
Janet Neilson
Malini Lewis
Penny Peckham
Anne-Maree Taylor
"Vessel- container of possibilities"
Vessel – container of possibilities
Malini Lewis, Janet Neilson, Penny Peckham and Anne-Maree Taylor work with an array of print techniques including cyanotype, collagraph, relief, intaglio and monoprints.
The four artists have compatible art practices and have found a common ground in the themes they explore. ‘Vessel’ evokes a range of responses and interpretations. The works shown here reflect the features of each artist’s practice.
For Peckham, the vessel may operate as a metaphor for the female body and is at times inscribed with text — quotes taken from contemporary women — which embody a sense of power and defiance.
In exploring the vessel, Neilson is drawn to everyday domestic receptacles, some becoming her substrate, others used as a matrix for mark making. Taking inspiration from textile traditions, her work explores ideas of being wrapped, protected and comforted.
Lewis, with her alchemical approach to materials, interweaves and layers her introspective subject matter. Utilising watercolour, cyanotype, chine-colle, relief and intaglio she works with concepts of transmutation, transformation and transcendence.
The memorial nature of objects is highly valued by Taylor. Her recent travels through Rajasthan have brought her interest in the vessel into sharp focus. The tangible nature of vessels — both utilitarian objects and the pietra dura images found in grand forts and palaces — emphasises the memory and emotion these items can provoke.
Biography – Anne-Maree Taylor
Anne-Maree Taylor was a member of Studio Paradiso in
Sandon, from 2015 until January 2024. She continues to
print in Central Victoria.
She has exhibited in multiple exhibitions locally and in
Melbourne. Most recent exhibitions include at
Firestation Print Studio Armadale, Castlemaine Press
and the Art Room in Footscray.
She is a member of Castlemaine Press, Firestation Print
Studio, The Art Room, the Australian Print Council and
subscribes to Pressing Matters.
Taylor has attended print making workshops overseas,
and completed a residency at the Skopelos Art
Foundation on Skopelos Island in Greece 2023.
She recently has participated in workshops in Aluminium
Lithography, cyanotype, gel plate printing and
completed a Grampians Brushes week-long workshop in
September 2024.
She has been awarded another printmaking residency at
Skopart for September-October 2025.
Biography – Janet Neilson
Janet Neilson studied Printmaking at the South
Australian School of Art, graduating in 1990. Living in
Melbourne for 18 years, she exhibited regularly in group
shows there and in Adelaide.
Visits to Cyprus with access to a printmaking studio, as
well as a move to Central Victoria in 2016 have been
pivotal to her ongoing practice.
Living in a creative community in regional Victoria, Janet
participates regularly in the region’s Open Studio
programs. She has exhibited in successful group shows
at Lot19 Gallery (2021), Newstead Arts Hub (2023) and
Artpuff in Castlemaine (2024).
Neilson was short-listed for the inaugural Michael Beazer
Works on Paper Prize at the East Gippsland Art Gallery
in 2024. Current memberships are with Castlemaine
Press and Firestation Print Studio.
0498 987 576
janetneilson@bigpond.com
Instagram @ramshackleprints
Biography – Malani Lewis
Malini Lewis is a graduate of RMIT University, having
completed a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art - Honours) in
2018. She was awarded the year-long APW Collie Print
Trust Scholarship for Emerging Victorian Printmakers on
completion of her initial Fine Art degree in 2017.
Having lived overseas for most of her life, starting with
two exceptionally formative years in Singapore
aged nine, and subsequently including two decades in
Papua New Guinea and another two in Canada, Lewis
has naturally developed a receptive and resilient outlook
and seeks to express this in her work which also — and
for the same reasons — readily incorporates risk, found
marks and whatever else is there in the moment.
She currently lives and works in Castlemaine and
exhibits regularly, locally, in Melbourne and regional
Victoria. As a member of the Goldfields Printmakers,
Lewis exhibits interstate and occasionally, overseas.
Biography – Penny Peckham
Penny Peckham is an artist printmaker, based in
Castlemaine since 2014.
With a PhD in Art History, much of her work has been
influenced by her research areas of feminist and
women’s art more broadly.
Since completing a Diploma of Art in the late 1990s
Penny has continued to develop her skills as a
printmaker, attending workshops with teachers including Basil Hall, Sarah Amos, Glen Skein and Diane Fogwell.
She has been a member of the Goldfields Printmakers
group since 2015, regularly participating in exhibitions
with them in Australia and internationally. She is also a
member of both Castlemaine Press and the Firestation
Print Studio, exhibiting with both from time to time.
Penny is part of a group of experienced printmakers with a current touring exhibition, Time & Tide, concerned with
the way in which printmaking — and the artists’
individual practices — have evolved since the 1970s.
Time & Tide showed in Ballina NSW in late 2024, will
travel to Broken Hill in November and then to Swan Hill
Regional Gallery in late 2026.
Penny has participated in Mount Alexander open studios for the past eight years and has been a finalist in prize exhibitions including the Silk Cut Award for Linocut Prints and the Manly Library Artist Book Award.
GALLERY TWO
Bruce Plant
Keith Haggett
Melinda Holt
"Open Studio Trail 2025"
Open Studio Trail 2025
Bruce Plant
These small works reflect my current direction, in
terms of theme and technique. My message is one
of goodwill and positive communication.
I have been painting seriously for over 50 years,
but these days the emphasis is more to do with
having fun.
Keith Haggett
Keith is a self taught fine art landscape photographer. He has had a lifelong love of creating art, producing posters as a teenager, oil painting, and photography. Keith’s passion for the great outdoors and photography go hand in hand, combining his two great loves.
Keith’s ultimate goal is to capture that never-to-be-repeated, fleeting moment in time and space, that Mother Nature creates, and to turn that moment into a piece of artwork, for all to enjoy.
He generally uses filters to slow down the movement of water and clouds, to show patterns that the human eye can miss.
Capturing sunrises and sunsets, and stormy skies are some of Keith’s favourite subjects to photograph.
Keith has received recognition in the annual Australian
Photography Magazine Landscape Awards, achieving one
Finalist, quiet a few Highly Commended Awards and several
Commended Awards.
Several years ago Keith and his wife had a tree change, moving from Melbourne to South Gippsland and love the beauty of thearea.
Melinda Holtt
Melinda is a mixed media artist based in South Gippsland,
whose work is shaped by a deep sensitivity to language, form,
and colour. Words and phrases often inspire her creative
process, acting as internal maps that influence the emotional
tone and narrative of her pieces.
Through abstraction, she translates the rhythm and texture of
language into visual form, creating works that evoke abstracted
landscapes — spaces defined by memory, mood, and meaning
— creating her own personal geography. Her practice expresses
the emotion and memory of place through layered mark-making,
texture, and gesture.
After formal training at Victoria University and the Victorian
College of the Arts, Melinda expanded her practice through
residencies in Broken Hill, New South Wales and St. Ives,
Cornwall (UK).
She further refined her visual language during a ten-month
mentorship with the Turps Banana Correspondence Course
(2022–2023). Her first solo exhibition was held at Meeniyan Art
Gallery in 2023.
Melinda has exhibited in group shows in Melbourne, the
Mornington Peninsula, South Gippsland and the Bass Coast.
GALLERY THREE
Helen Nkansah
"Vanishing Point"
Vanishing Point
Helen Nkansah
Architecture, ornithology and cinematography are key to
Nkansah’s artwork. This body of work explores how architecture
evokes ideas of “dreams” where boundaries of reality can be
explored and become a stage for local migratory shorebirds.
Outer spaces are reinterpreted as inner spaces in which an
endangered bird is seen out of context with its surroundings.
The pieces investigate the idea of the vanishing point as a
concept of disappearance as well as a convergence or pathway.
Figurative and abstract ‘constructive’ paintings complete the
filmic narratives that suggest notions of change, transformation
and journey.
By altering buildings’ meaning and function, Nkansah invites
viewers to reflect on how a space for human engagement can
influence an awareness of a future for a species.
Biography
Helen Nkansah is an Australian artist residing and practising in
South Gippsland.
Following an Art Degree majoring in Painting from Curtin
University, she has been developing a body of work as an
emerging artist. In South Gippsland she held two solo
exhibitions in 2024, awarded art prizes in 2022 and 2024, and
selected as a finalist in 2023, 2024 and 2025. She has held
exhibitions prior to her move to Victoria, in Australia and New
Zealand.
A former career in Post Production in the Documentary Film
Industry within Australia and overseas gives her a background
which directly relates to a filmic quality in her work that
encompasses elements of storytelling as she investigates
migratory ornithology seemingly framed against an architectural
backdrop.