Exhibition Dates: 21 October – 21 November 2026
Opening Event: Wednesday 21 October | Artist Talk 5:30 – 6:15pm | Opening event: 6:30 – 7:30pm
Petalia Humphreys presents, Before The Object, a collection of playful 2D and 3D architectonic paintings that trace the transition of an object from latent being to active becoming. Since the beginning of her art practice some 30 years ago, Humphreys has made abstracted objects, most recently using wood and housepaint – materials that might be at home on a building site, albeit potentially without the rosy pink hues used by Humphreys. She constructs these objects in different ways, with mitred angles, forming architectonic cubes, rectangles, hinged three-dimensional objects, and stools.
Her creative process begins with a physical site or space, which she photographs and reiterates digitally before recreating its distilled essence as sculpture. The viewer may never know the original site or the extent of these translations but, by the time Humphreys’s sculptures in plywood appear in a gallery context, they have evolved into objects designed to stimulate engagement. They extend perceptions and experiences of space and place. In this way, the work enters a permeable space that is co-created – before the object – with its audiences.
