Noosa Council respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waters of the Noosa area, the Kabi Kabi people, and pays respect to their Elders, past, present, and emerging.
Amanda Bennetts | Camille Therese | Jack Staley | Jaime Kiss | Kim Guthrie | Max Berry | Simone Eisler | Zartisha Davis
The Pearl and The Irritant reflects on the paradoxes of our world: industries built on the exploitation of living organisms, crafted under the perfected duress of forces beyond their control, to create marvels that both captivate and obscure. Like pearls formed in response to an irritant like a grain of sand within a mollusk shell, these creations arise from delicate and often invisible processes, many of which are sustained by an underlying tension — a constant, invisible force. This exhibition draws attention to the complex interplay between the beauty and suffering embedded in these processes, exploring how marvels are often born from conditions of duress, and how the seemingly miraculous can obscure the realities of labor, fragility, and control.
The works in The Pearl and The Irritant draw from this theme to offer unexpected resources — from mystic, hazy depictions of landscapes on the verge of disappearance, to images that evoke the subtle shifts of domestication, where both the environment and the body are constantly molded by forces outside of their control. These landscapes, at once ethereal and ephemeral, are both a testament to beauty and a reminder of fragility, capturing a world that teeters on the edge of transformation or loss. The pearlescent sheen of these images invites us into a state of tension, shimmering like a mirage, where what is visible and what is hidden constantly shifts, revealing and then concealing other presences, other histories, and other possibilities.
This exhibition invites consideration of tension as a generative force that reminds us that there is a deeper, more nuanced story beneath the glossy surface — one where the beauty of the pearl is inseparable from the histories of care, extraction, and the unacknowledged labor that has shaped its creation.
In this exhibition, labor and duress are never distant concepts, but are embedded within the textures and imagery themselves. The works ask us to consider the tension between what is visibly miraculous and the labor that underpins it — from the cycles of extraction to the quiet, often invisible work that sustains the systems we depend on. We are asked to look closer: to see the work behind the shine, to feel the tension that holds everything together. The imagery of domestication becomes a subtle allegory for the ways in which systems of control shape and define us, and how those forces, while invisible, continue to exert their influence over both the environment and the body.
The pearlescent mirages that permeate the exhibition evoke an awareness of a world that is both here and just beyond reach — a world caught between the known and the unknowable, the beautiful and the brutal, the ephemeral and the eternal. The Pearl and The Irritant explores how tensions can be fertile ground for creation and destruction, marvel and loss, and how the discomfort of duress is often the foundation of the extraordinary. It invites us to engage with the friction of the world, acknowledging that beauty is always inextricably bound to the forces that shape it, even when we are not looking. And in doing so, it asks us to honor the histories, the people, and the ongoing relationship between the land, sea, and all who inhabit it — a reminder that the pearl is not just a product of nature, but a symbol of the tensions that have shaped our past and continue to shape our future.
Curated by Ruby Donohoe.
