Ngununggula has unveiled Tender, a major new all-women exhibition featuring seven leading Australian painters, Sally Anderson, Sarah Drinan, Laura Jones, India Mark, Dionisia Salas, Julia Trybala and Amber Wallis.
Open until 15 June 2025, Tender delves into the concept of ‘tenderness’, a term often associated with notions of care and femininity, to explore its significance and many meanings beyond a gendered lens. Through new and existing work, the exhibition urges audiences to consider this sensitive yet provocative emotion as a multifaceted human experience, woven into the human form and permeating all aspects of life, from physical gesture and sensory perception to the ways we feel about and express ourselves.
Known for her vibrant works that center on observations of the natural world, Laura Jones presents a new series of still life and interior paintings, including three large-scale pieces. Weaving in intimate moments that capture interactions between figures and their environment, Jones’ works explore vulnerability, wonder, and optimism. Applying quick, broad strokes, she captures the essence and energy of her subjects and spaces.
Julia Trybala’s works explore the politics of the feminine body in space and the complexity of human relationships. Drawing from personal experiences and conversations with friends and family, she expresses emotional responses to the social dynamics of contemporary life. For Tender, Trybala showcases works featuring ambiguous body parts, subtle gestures, and expressions that invite reflection on intimacy and fragility.
India Mark presents new and recent still life paintings grounded in a genre historically dominated by women. Mark analyses the interplay of light, color, composition, and texture on everyday objects such as jars, bottles, cups, and fruit. Working tonally, she distills them to their essential elements, evoking a sense of quietude and contemplation.
Sarah Drinan’s recent works meditate on the body as a site of change and transformation. Her fleshy compositions examine where physical and emotional experiences intersect. With a background in mental health occupational therapy, she explores the complex nature of the body, with all its vulnerabilities, desires, discomforts, and imperfections.
Sally Anderson’s works draw from her experience of motherhood and domesticity, exploring how meaning and memory are preserved and expressed. In her recent dream-like paintings, Anderson blends abstraction and representation, still-life and landscape. Through layers of portals, windows, talismans, and autobiographical elements, she evokes themes of containment and care.
Dionisia Salas explores transitional states of existence, using the tactile process of painting to delve into consciousness, the subconscious, and dreams. For Tender, she presents works that blend figuration and abstraction, merging motifs of body, landscape, and the cosmos to evoke physical and emotional experiences that resonate with energy.
Amber Wallis presents a suite of paintings that explore feminism, domesticity, and her personal experiences as a woman and mother. Her work merges landscapes and interiors, reflecting both constraint and a desire for freedom. Influenced by utopian ideals, her paintings are gentle and mysterious, with figures and forms that shift between abstraction and reality.
Tender follows the popular 2024 exhibition Once More With Feeling, and is part of Ngununggula’s annual program committed to showcasing the work of Australian women artists, funded by the Artist’s Circle Patron Program.
Director of Ngununggula Megan Monte said: “Tender continues our commitment to championing the practices of Australian women artists. We are delighted to share this exhibition, which explores the rich and varied meanings of tenderness and its integration into our lived experience through the eyes of seven of Australia’s foremost contemporary women painters.”
Tender
Ngununggula, Retford Park, Bowral
Artists: Sally Anderson, Sarah Drinan, Laura Jones, India Mark, Dionisia Salas, Julia Trybala and Amber Wallis
To 15 June 2025
Image: Julia Trybala, Installation View Tender. Photography Mim Stirling
